Aranya Doloi
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Leonardo DiCaprio is that global celebrity who is always vocal about safeguarding the Earth; he believes in a life for the life of our planet. So much so, that when the actor finally won an Oscar for The Revenant, he used the Academy stage to talk about climate change and urged all to “not take this planet for granted”. And now DiCaprio’s attention has been caught by another environmental concern in India. He has drawn international attention to the ongoing water crisis in Chennai as he shared a BBC News post on Instagram talking about the issue.
Leonardo DiCaprio’s caption read “Only rain can save Chennai….” as he re-shared a photo of a dried-up well in Tamil Nadu’s capital city, surrounded by women with empty pots peering inside. The actor also commented on the post himself saying, “We can change the world”, thus adding a note of hope that action will be taken soon. This comes after four main reservoirs in Chennai went completely dry as the Central Water Commission reported a rainfall deficit of 41% in Tamil Nadu. Residents are facing acute water shortage and are dependent on state-run and private water tankers.
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In fact, according to NITI Aayog, India is facing the worst water crisis in history and 21 cities will run out of groundwater by 2020. Besides water crisis, our country is also facing major environmental threats in the form of the ever-increasing pollution, overpopulation and depletion of growth. And Indians are not particularly doing anything about it, rather 54000 mangrove trees spreading across 13.36 hectares will be razed for the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project. Every year during World Environment Day, we see our countrymen in their best environmentalist form, but looking at the current scenario, shouldn’t concern for the environment be a daily habit rather than over pouring it just for one day.
From the decreasing population of Bornean orangutans to protecting our oceans, Leonardo DiCaprio’s Instagram feed is full of posts concerning our planet and environment. A couple of days ago, the actor even shared another post about India’s environmental condition—he raised his concern about the Ghazipur garbage dump, which will soon be higher than the Taj Mahal. DiCaprio visited India back in 2015 to film a segment for his 2016 documentary film, Beyond the Flood and also visited the monument then.
