Jadav Payeng calls for week-long lockdown globally to strike eco-system balance

GUWAHATI, Feb 28: Expressing his serious concern about global warming, Padma Shri awardee environmentalist Jadav Payeng urged global leaders to call for a week-long lockdown across the world to strike a balance in the eco-system.

Payeng also known as the Forest Man of India was speaking on the theme ‘Indigenous Knowledge System’ at the ongoing Bodoland International Knowledge Festival in Kokrajhar on Tuesday.

“I would like to request to the 800 crore people of the planet to think towards striking a balance of the ecosystem. I feel if we can give a lockdown for a week in a year globally, the balance of the ecosystem will be back gradually. I’m saying this from my personal experience,” Payeng said.

The four-day knowledge festival is being organised by Bodoland University with active support from the Bodoland Territorial Region (BTR) government.

A believer in the concept ‘God is nature and nature is God’ Payeng also mentioned how he had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to preserve forests and green cover in India.

“I have personally written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi that we can’t bring development by destroying forests. We must safeguard our forests and nature. The development at the cost of nature is a curse,” Payeng reckoned.

Payeng also expressed his hope that the new education policy in the country would bring some change.

He further advocated for 60 percent reservation for women. “Women play a vital role in building human resource. And eventually, that will help in striking the balance of the ecosystem,” 64-year-old Payeng who has been invited to several places across the globe for environment-related issues, said.

Addressing the students, Payeng recalled his early days when he started to plant trees in 1979 which eventually turned out to be a huge forest after 30 years.

On the second day of the festival, several seminars took place on the themes like quality education, sustainable agriculture, behaviour change, science & technology, gender empowerment, communication and media, human rights, child rights & protection and peacebuilding among others.

Earlier, the festival was inaugurated on Monday in the presence of several dignitaries including Nobel laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus, Padma Shri awardee philanthropist and diamond exporter Savji Bhai Dholakia, SECMOL founder Sonam Wangchuk, Bollywood actor and philanthropist Vivek Oberoi among others.