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Time magazine celebrates Baba Seechewal
WSN Network

WASHINGTON: In a rare honour for the community, the much respected Time magazine has sang fulsome praise for environmentalist Baba Balbir Singh Seechewal calling him someone who has set out to clean up the mess. 

The magazine article on him described how Baba Seechewal, single handedly and drawing upon the great institution of Karsewa, cleared the Kali Bein, a 99-mile-long (160 km) river considered sacred by the state's majority Sikh population.  

The river was "reduced to a filthy drain into which six towns and more than 40 villages emptied their waste. Parts of the river dried up, leaving neighboring farmlands parched. Its polluted waters also seeped underground, contaminating the groundwater and causing lethal diseases." 

it was then, beginning 2000, that Seechewal taught locals why they should clean the Kali Bein, "enlisting volunteers to do the physical work and raising funds for equipment." 

"Today, the Kali Bein is thriving. Families head there for picnics and the devout bathe during religious festivals," the magazine said. 

As for Seechewal, he has turned his sights onto the tanneries and other factories that dispose of untreated waste in rivers.

1 October 2008
 

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