Bahar Dutt

November , 2006

Friday , November 17, 2006

A River Gone Dead


46IBNLive Google Buzz

The time when you are driving back from having shot your story is a tough one. You are left with images imprinted in your mind which are disturbing - and you feel guilty for walking away from the problem. I have just finished a six-week period of shooting at various points at the Ganga. Our story involves documenting how filthy the river is. I have rashes all over and on most days I just throw up. Along with my cameraperson we have walked through sludge, garbage, animal carcasses. In the evening I call up our Investigations editor, disheartened and depressed at all I have seen through the day. Children working with bare hands, on the river bed amongst carcinogenic heavy metals like chrome and mercury, the gracious Egyptian vultures feeding on animal fat from the tanneries and an old man mixing wastes with water to make soaps. ....


IBN7IBN7
IBN7IBN7

More about Bahar Dutt

Bahar Dutt is a wildlife conservationist by training. She has worked for the last ten years on crucial wildlife conservation projects in India and abroad. In England she worked at the world famous Jersey Zoo set up by naturalist Gerald Durrell and was involved in assessing the conditions for release of endangered primate in the Amazon forests. . She has over 10 awards to her credit including the Ramnath Goenka Award in 2006 and the Wildscreen Award , UK and the Young Environment Journalist Award 2007. As an environment editor at CNN-IBN she has done a range of stories travelling to far and forgotten corners of this country to expose the nexus between the mining mafia, politicians and corporates. She has posed as a furniture maker to expose the illegal trade in banned timber in the Western Ghats, and the nexus between the police and a mining company in the Niyamgiri hills of Orissa. One of her most dramatic exposés involved a cement company of global dimensions that had been operating illegally in the forests of Meghalaya on the India-Bangladesh border. More recently, she and the CNN-IBN team exposed the operations of a miner in Goa who had illegally devastated forest lands. Their story led to the shut down of the mine.
IBN7IBN7

IBN7IBN7

Recent Posts

Archives

IBNLiveIBNLive