From the top of her ten years, she fights so that the authorities of her country act, finally take concrete measures to fight against this deadly heat wave and does not relegate it to the simple rank of weather anecdote. And indeed, it is clear that after six weeks of heat wave, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has only just, Thursday, May 5, to ask the regions to give him “lists of possible solutions“. Suffice to say that we are not there yet. Meanwhile, Licypriya Kangujam uses her Twitter account to inform those who want to be informed. She reports that at least 25 people have died of heatstroke in the Bombay region, that in Jacobad in Pakistan, we recorded a temperature of 49.6°C, a world record for the month of April. In New Delhi, it was 46°C We exceeded 40°C at home in Manipur, more than ten degrees above seasonal averages.
Either heat waves or air pollution will kill us. We can’t breathe. Act Now. #ClimateCrisis pic.twitter.com/W4BDlOSt2b
— Licypriya Kangujam (@LicypriyaK) May 2, 2022
By dint of publications, his approach has attracted the attention of a TV channel Indian, and even New York Times to which she recounts her daily life for six weeks: the power grid failing, the incessant power cuts, the fans that have become useless, and then the school bus transformed into a furnace, the impossibility of playing outside. Finally dizziness, dehydration. And his fatigue in the face of inertia.
For the past two years, Licypriya has been a gifted person who has made headlines not for her math grades, but because she advocates for climate change to become a full-fledged subject at school. She demonstrated in 2019 in front of the Indian parliament, then mobilized with each episode of pollution to demand action.
But the more time passes, the more his fight is a fight against fatalism, resignation, the feeling of powerlessness. “Yes, we can actshe says, the solutions are known“. She explains that the state could start by not approving deforestation projects in the Parsa jungle, for example, not allowing new coal mines either, as it did a few days ago, and then green cities, plant millions of trees, establish car-free days…”But you know, I’m only ten years oldshe said on television, it’s up to adults, governments to act now, without waiting for my generation to grow up.”