so in today's video we're going to do a response to a Quint video which was in
response to an OpIndia video which was in response to a Quint video inception
Let's Start the show
hello hello and welcome welcome to another edition of The Sham Sharma Show
show thank you very much for joining me today thank you very much for watching I
appreciate you okay so today I'm gonna be responding to like I said before a
Quint video now what happened was the Quint came out with a video which was
based around an NGT report which is the national green tribunal report which
said that the art of living foundations world cultural festival that was held in
Delhi in 2016 over three days that had completely destroyed the floodplains of
that area and that had caused irreversible damage and completely
destroyed the vegetation of the area it also mentioned a couple of farmers who
said that their land had been destroyed and who said that they were not able to
farm there anymore and they were not giving given any proceeds or anything
like that and then OpIndia came out with another video in response to that
and they actually went and talked to the farmers on the ground and the farmers
actually said that well that's not what we were actually saying is that our
entire conversations were not used and our conversations were edited a little
bit now you can check out both of those videos in the description below the
links to them are provided down there you can check them out and make your own
mind up but then Quint responded to the OPIndia video and they were saying in
that video that we didn't tell anything to the farmers we didn't edit anything
out and we're gonna release the raw footage of the conversations with the
farmers as well but on their YouTube page that raw footage is not available
so maybe it's available on their website you can probably go check out there I
would advise them to put that on their YouTube so in the second video what they
talked about is okay whatever you talked about the farmers but what you didn't
really answer was what the core of the issue was and the core of the issue was
was the assertions made by an environmental activist Vimlendu Jha
in the video I'm gonna try and answer those allegations today so before we get
to what Vimlendu Jha particularly said I want to kind of talk about this whole
idea that this three-day festival has completely irreparably destroyed the
natural vegetation of those floodplains and it has completely laid the
floodplains barren it is very easy to point a finger at this one event that
didn't really do any tangible damage to the area which I'm gonna get into later
in the video it's very easy to point you
know your finger at a particular organization
or at a particular event rather than actually look at the inconvenient hard
truths of the matter environmental bodies and environmental activists have
often looked the other way as uncontrolled pollution land
encroachments sand mining untreated sewage discharges dumped garbage slum
clusters illegal agricultural activities and illegal Pucca colonies that have
been constructed and that have been happening in and around that Yamuna
River area these are the things right here that have been choking and
strangling this river to death or the past many many years various
unauthorised colonies are sprung up around the river and I've been choking
the river to death over the past few years look at the names of these
colonies like Rajiv Nagar Sonia vihara Usmanpur Abul Fazal Enclave Shaheen
bagh etc now these colonies that have come up around here have the patronage
of certain political parties I think it's very easy to guess which that have
allowed these colonies to come up on these floodplains here that have been
slowly destroying the floodplain area what is more likely to be destroying the
Yamuna River and the floodplains around it all of these activities that have
been happening for the past many many years or one three-day event that
happened in 2016 if you said the three-day event then congratulations you
are a true secular and the other thing also did this National green tribunal
report that they're talking about this report is using very ambiguous
language very highly questionable claims and completely unscientific reasoning to
present its case so now we're gonna look at what the environmental activists in
the Quint video Vimlendu Jha and the allegations and the claims that he's
making there's gonna be some weird text on the video when I quoted because I
don't know how to download videos off of websites because I'm horrible at
technology so please bear with me on this one it looks like a like a
playground it wasn't supposed to be a playground it was supposed to be a wetland an ecologically sensitive zone which is which has been destroyed
plundered by this Baba called Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's there was a different
kind of corruption I would not say that it was exchange of money but exchange of
favor or unlawful activity or going beyond the law of the land is
also form of corruption government really went against law of the land and
gave them permission to plunder sixty-eight hectares of floodplains is
is really really almost leasing out state property public resource on to a
god man in that sense in Good faith let's actually look at the second claim
that he's made that the Art of Living Foundation actually has gone completely
against the law of the land that land belongs to the Delhi Development
Authority it belongs to the DDA funny thing is that he himself mentions in the
video that there's no money that exchange had not just that they also
took permission from the Delhi Pollution Control Committee the U P irrigation
committee the Delhi Disaster Management Authority irrigation and flood control
Department of Delhi so yeah I mean if you really think about it it is the
worst kind of corruption where you follow all the procedures and you take
all the permissions that are required and you don't even pay anybody off it's
the worst kind of corruption I mean what is India coming to I mean think about it
what's gonna happen next people are gonna start stopping whenever there's a
red light and as soon as the light turns green you don't hear 15 horns behind you
within the first two seconds is that the India that you want to live in that you
want your kids to grow up in I didn't think so and looking at the first point
that he actually talks about about how this is supposed to be a wetland and
this whole wetland has just been completely destroyed so again if we look
at the Ramsar convention according to the Ramsar convention yes there is
supposed to be no gathering or activity on the wetland but the area where the
festival took place is not a wetland the ISRO's national wetland atlas of 2011
identifies 399 wetlands in Delhi however the area in which the festival took
place according to the East Rose atlas as well does not contain any wetlands
what the area is is a floodplain which was converted into a farmland and there
are no such restrictions of gatherings on a floodplain examples of flood plains
where gatherings happen is the kumbhamela you're teaching people how to
breathe and cut all my trees in return that's a bad bad encounter but we blame
duty that is a bad bad example because it turns out that not only was the
vegetation in the area or damaged not a single tree was cut
down just to make sure not a single tree was cut the number of trees before the
event and right after the event were counted using high-res satellite images
and the numbers were exactly the same bad bad example so basically what this
report is trying to say is that an event that took place over three days after
which it was completely cleaned up and it took place on an area of around 25
hectares completely destroyed an area of nearly 10,000 hectares line of reasoning
doesn't really make sense at all bad bad example and not only they did
not destroy the area they actually removed a truckload of debris that was
present on the area as well The Art of Living Foundation also developed an
eco-friendly enzyme formulation which was made from kitchen waste which helped
remove the stench the unbearable stench that was present in the area near of the
Yamana because anybody who's from Delhi always been to Delhi or who's been near
the Yamuna in Delhi knows how smelly that River can be you picked the wrong
foundation to put these allegations on because the other looing foundation is
not really damaging places but what it is actually doing is restoring rivers
and areas around the rivers in many water part state particularly where they
have actually rejuvenated 22 rivers in Maharashtra alone
and again like I talked about before you know the the NGT report and even the
expert committee report they don't really provide any scientific basis to
how this damage has happened or any tangible evidence to how the damage has
happened what has been the damage what they talk about is is this invisible
loss of biodiversity not just that they also set up an expert committee like I
said to calculate the monetary value of the damage that was done to the area and
that the damage is that the Art of Living Foundation would then need to pay
but as it turns out the monetary value that they determined turned out to be a
pretty arbitrary value and this was acknowledged by the chairman of the
expert committee Mr. Shashi Shekhar he wrote a letter to the chair of the NGT
where he himself recognized that the random figure of 120 crore demanded as a
compensation was an inadvertent mistake it was not based
on any scientific assessment it did not have any scientific basis and was due to
the fact that he was running high fever and could not see the entire report
prepared by the experts we have to recognize a couple of things here too
that all this noise is being made for an event that is celebrating Indian values
Hindu culture and Hindu values but no such noise is made for the Maramon
Convention which is the largest Christian convention that is held in
Asia and that is held in India in Kerala on the banks of the Pampa River and you
can see all the construction that is going on and all the digging that is
going on around the banks of the river now that sense of power and and
therefore sense of agency and watch what he owns it's very very important that
someone like himself should need it should use it for positive outcome for
real actual work rather than propaganda so what's the propaganda here what's the
propaganda that you're talking about so essentially what you're saying is
bringing people together from different geographies different languages
different races different religions different cultures and different
nationalities to come together and celebrate the oneness of humanity to
celebrate peace to celebrate yoga to celebrate meditation respect for nature
human values and cultural diversity and highlighting various indigenous and
tribal art forms off across the world are you saying that propaganda bad bad
encounters because if that is so that is probably the best kind of propaganda
possible on the planet and I'll tell you why
what the art of living is trying to do and I'll tell you why what any movement
or any organization that talks about Indian values in Indian culture why
that's painted as propaganda the reason it's painted as propaganda is because
the left absolutely hates what the art of living stands for the success of
organizations like the art of living is the confirmation of India's cultural
significance in the world and the confirmation of the incredible gifts
that India's culture has provided the world with and the fact that so many
thousands of people came from across the world to participate in this is again
affirmation of the same thing and because the left is hell-bent on
painting India and its culture as backward as oppressive savage and
patriarchal when they see that people from across the world are embracing
India's cultural contribution to the world they can't stand it because it
defeats their entire agenda that they're trying to push so I want to hear what
you guys think about this video as well I want to hear what you guys think about
the OPndia video the Quint video of this whole situation let me know your
thoughts in the comment section below as well
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I will see you for the next episode and until then stay happy stay healthy and
I'll see you soon bad bad example bad bad example bad
bad example