10-year-old Baraut girl face of Hindon River Rejuvenation Project

MEERUT: For most girls her age, life revolves around dolls and dresses, but 10-year-old Manassangyini Chaudhary has already trekked to the Kanchenjunga base camp at 16,300-ft and will now campaign to save west UP’s heavily polluted Hindon river as the face of Hindon River Rejuvenation Project.

Born to an environment loving couple from Baraut in Baghpat district, Manassangyini is passionate about saving glaciers and rivers. “From a very early stage, my father explained to me the important role nature plays in our lives. We have spent a lot of time in natural surroundings,” she says. “We have read about droughts and the havoc contaminated water plays with human lives. There are so many villages in our district where people are suffering from all kind of water-borne diseases. I have decided to devote my life to the cause of environment conservation.”

The Hindon project is a joint initiative of Tarun Bharat Sangh (an NGO involved in community mobilisation for environment conservation), Water Resources Group (experts in low-cost water treatment technologies) and UP Government.

Manassangyini came to TBS founder Rajendra Singh’s notice through reports of her family’s Kanchenjunga feat, in which her younger sister Suryassangyini set a record for being the youngest trekker at the base camp. “I had read about this girl in newspapers when she had trekked to the Kanchenjunga base camp,” Singh told TOI over phone. He came to know how she was cultivating love for nature among her friends, and sensed her strong passion for environment conservation.

Singh, a Magsaysay awardee who is known as ‘Water Man of India’, invited Manassangyini to his Alwar-based NGO “to give a short presentation at a workshop on Leadership for ‘Social and Ecological Justice’. In that half-hour presentation, she left everyone awestruck. Later, she approached me to help her save waterbodies in her region.”

Singh hopes the girl will inspire people. “By making Manassangyini the brand ambassador for Hindon River Rejuvenation Project, we wish to send a strong message to children, youth and even adults, that water is precious, and this girl has the zeal required to take it forward.”

Speaking to TOI, Manassangyini said, “I have seen with my own eyes how glaciers are formed drop by drop, and how life saving water is carried down the mountains to reach the plains. And, here we are destroying the priceless environmental resource. It needs to change and it needs to change fast or we will smother the very resource that sustains life on this planet.”