Nandita Das voices concern over cutting of trees in Aarey forest

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Nandita Das on Wednesday criticised the proposed move of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to cut over 2,700 trees in Aarey Colony for Mumbai metro's car shed. Green activists and citizens' groups have been up in the arms against the BJP-led Maharashtra government's plan to fell the trees in Aarey Colony in north Mumbai for car shed of the metro.

Several celebrities including Lata Mangeshkar, John Abraham, Kangana Ranaut, Dia Mirza, Shraddha Kapoor and Sonakshi Sinha, among others, have raised concerns over the move. At an event here, Nandita called the forested area as the "lung of the city" and said the authorities should finds modern ways to build infrastructure without cutting down the trees.

"If you are cutting 3,000 trees, which is the lung of the city, we should definitely talk against this. I do understand that we have urban planning and there are demands of a city but how do we not abuse the nature and how do we still do this.

"There are lot of experiments and strategies that are being worked out world over so we should also adopt the same," Nandita told reporters here at an event here.

The actor-director was talking to media at the store launch of Shades of India in suburban Mumbai. She was present along with Gul Panag and Tisca Chopra. The actor recently shot for a two minute anthem called 'India's Got Colour' with Gul, Ali Fazal, Radhika Apte, Tannishtha Chatterjee and others.

The idea, Nandita said, was the use of words like 'fair', 'dark' be not reinforced. "It is a campaign 'Dark is Beautiful'. Someone else had started it and I was supporting it. It's been ten years and I felt we should reinvent it. I fail to understand why do we consider 'fair as lovely and dark as beautiful'. I think women generally, have this burden of being beautiful. We have skills, talent and we are intelligent, we can do everything and anything.

"So we have called the campaign 'India's Got Colour' and it is time we celebrate our diversity. Gul is part of the campaign. It is not essential that only those who are dark be part of it, we all should help each other. It is not my campaign alone and we should celebrate the diversity India has."

Both Nandita and Gul also spoke about the poor conditions of potholes in the city. "Our responsibility is to take care of our environment. We should not take climate change as just another word or concept, which we do not understand. We should seriously think of ways of how to reuse, or consume less. Our role will be less but we need to make that difference," Nandita said.

Gul said, "It is the responsibility of every one of us to maintain a clean and hygienic environment otherwise the drainage system will why clocked. BMC has big role to play in this but as citizens we also have responsibility."

(With PTI inputs)