I Will Save My Land
5th December 2020 / 6:30 pm IST /
Zoom & Youtube
In the fifth Reading for Change event, we explore Rinchin’s I Will Save My Land as an entry point to SDG 7 Affordable and Clean Energy. I Will Save My Land is a picture book that tells the story of a young girl, Mati, who is determined to save her and her family’s plot of land from the impending development of a coal mine.
Join author Rinchin and Shripad Dharmadhikary, an activist, researcher, and coordinator of the Manthan Adhyayan Kendra, in conversation about I Will Save My Land and the conflicts and concerns around affordable and clean energy.
Get your copy of the book and join the discussion with your questions and reflections. Register here.
Click here for more information on SDG7.
Speakers
Rinchin
Rinchin is a writer and an activist based in Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh. She also writes for children and her writing reflects her social engagement with several people movements for the past two decades.
Shripad Dharmadhikary
Shripad Dharmadhikary is an activist, researcher, and coordinator of the Manthan Adhyayan Kendra that studies water and energy policies. His interests include dams, rivers, environmental flows, inland waterways, water privatisation and coal-water nexus. He is a member of the Forum for Policy Dialogue on Water Conflicts in India and also on its Steering Committee. He writes extensively on issues of water, environment and development.
Mati pesters her grandmother and father for her own plot of land in the big field. When she does get it, she works hard. And then she hears that a company wants to make a coal mine in their village – the enormous black pit that will eat up all their lands, like it has in the next village.
As always, Rinchin powers her questions through irresistible storytelling. The little girl’s anxiety about losing her land to “a monster machine” cuts close to the heart as it takes head-on an issue that is ravaging tribal Chhattisgarh, where this story is set, and every other place where there is ‘development’ at a cost. The earthy tones of the illustrations take us straight into the fields, while strong lines etch out the determination of two feisty females – Mati and her Ajji – who will not give in.