He cycles across country to do his bit

BANGALORE: Anybody would dismiss him by his looks in a shabby torn-off sweater and cap with some papers in his hand trying to demonstrate something on a muddy cycle. But this temporary school teacher from a remote village in West Bengal is traveling across cities on his bicycle to create awareness on global warming and its consequences.

In his pocket, there are some pennies with which he cannot even afford to take shelter in a free shelter home or a meal in a day. Ram Prasad Naskar, a temporary geography teacher appointed, in a high school in a village in West Bengal got stirred when he came across a piece about the glaciers melting down in the Arctic. He wished to tell his countrymen to stop contributing to global warming but he did not know how.
Dr Jayshree Roy, a professor in Jadavpur University in Kolkata came to his rescue. She runs a global climate change programme in the varsity and he was well guided by her. But this is when it clicked to him to go around the country on a cycle to create awareness.

He set out from Kolkata with some financial assistance from the West Bengal government during November 2013. When he reached Bangalore during the third week of January 2014, he did not know where to stay. He went to the Uttarahalli police station, to take shelter but the city showed its worst parochial face to him. They denied him a stay for one night.

He finally got shelter in a Jain temple in Gandhinagar. But his problem doesn't end here. He slept without eating a dinner only because a dinner on a roadside stall for a plate of rice is no less than Rs15. And he cannot even afford that.

When asked how he managed his journey through Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Ongole, Nagpur, North Karnataka till he reached Bangalore, he smiles and said, "Sometimes I had to beg. I have exhausted all the puffed rice and beaten rice that I carried from home. Just kept some to show to shops in different states to explain what I want to buy."

He set out for his journey to Hyderabad and further to Chennai and Kerala and further to the western part of the country by getting an acknowledgment on a sheet of paper that is a testimony of his travails from the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board on Church street.

He carries with him such testimonies collected from pollution control boards in other states and some newspaper articles of his endeavour. "People would ask me what would I achieve doing this. I teach 100 children, off them only 10 reach the 10th board level. Again only five of them would get to the college and perhaps only one of them gets a job. I am just satisfied with that feeling," he leaves, saying this.