Celebrate Colours With A Change

Holi is all about colours and water. But with the nation facing severe dearth of water, citizens are ensuring that water is not wasted by playing Holi and still keeping the spirit of the festival intact.

It is good to see common citizens taking the charge on themselves and ensuring they don’t add to the problem while spreading smiles.

Indian Development Foundation (IDF), a non-government organisation celebrates Holi in a manner that is eco-friendly and dry. Members of the organisation go to leprosy centres and schools for underprivileged children to celebrate the festival of colours.

Shashank Shetty, member of IDF who would be celebrating Holi with underprivileged students of an education trust says, “We celebrate Holi with flower petals as it gives people feeling of happiness and joy without using harmful chemical colours. Dry Holi is the need of the hour right now. If situation changes we can use water. But currently we need to understand the drought situations and should support it.”

Children are told about importance water and natural resources while explaining significance of Holi. Dolly Singh a student of Children Public School in Mumbai says excitedly, “Till now, we used colours and water to play Holi. It was good to celebrate it this year using flowers. Our area faces shortage of water. Everyone should thus celebrate such waterless Holi. These flowers should then be used for making manure.”

Students of the Advanced Integrated Communications Program- 2015-16 of the Xavier Institute of Communications have set out on a mission to urge the people of Mumbai to play a waterless Holi, in light of the water shortage and drought problem faced across the state.

The campaign is called ‘Ctrl+S Water’ under which people were urged to take a dry Holi pledge. They were encouraged to wear stickers and dip the palms of their hands in dry gulaal and put the impression on a white cloth. People also signed various banners which displayed social messages.

Resident associations are spreading the message and asking residents to play dry Holi. “Maharashtra is a drought affected area and thus it calls for conservation of water from our end too. Government cannot do everything and so citizens need to play their roles responsibly. We have requested members of our area to voluntarily ensure that water is not wasted,” says Nitin Nikam, President, Tilak Nagar Resident Welfare Association.

Hotels plan many water bound events every year to celebrate Holi for their patrons. But this year, hotels are asked to avoid wastage of water while celebrating Holi. “We have advised all our members to have dry Holi celebration and not fill their hotel swimming pools with colours. We have to be sensitive to the reality of the situation. We are quite sure of observing compliance from our members,” said Bharat Malkani, President, Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Associations of India.