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Shreya questions government’s silence on lack of health services
The pandemic made us realise the importance of taking care of the planet. Resources are limited but consumption is a lot. To begin with, disposal of masks is something I know needs to be
The biggest lifestyle change I’ve made is moving away from goods that are packaged in plastic. I had cut down on personal plastic, in terms of water bottles. Of late, I discovered there are ethical beauty brands that are organic, cruelty-free and don’t package the products in plastic. Instead, they believe in paper packaging, which is recyclable.
Actor Shreya Dhanwanthary isn’t just angry but flustered with the continued silence on the government’s part about the country’s weak medical infrastructure, which resulted in numerous deaths and widespread suffering during the second wave of the Covid-19 crisis.
“My family and I were aware that the virus isn’t going to vanish. So, the second wave didn’t come as a surprise. But we’re shocked with the way it was handled and how unprepared we were,” Dhanwanthary rues.
With the steep rise in the number of cases in March, our failure to handle something of that magnitude came to the fore. “Even today, we haven’t had anyone talk about the lack of medical infrastructure and facilities. Not a single person has come up and said, ‘Yes, you’re right, we screwed up, let’s do better, we will do better’. All we’ve heard is people assigning blame,” she laments, calling it rather “childish” to see adults, “especially people who we’ve entrusted with power”, to behave this way. done properly. Cut the strings and dispose them, so birds and animals aren’t harmed. Also, cut down on plastic, that’s a big nono now. I’d request everyone to make these small changes, it begins with each one of us.
I think I’ve become a more conscious shopper. I take a moment to weigh all the options. I check if the product I intend to buy is easily recyclable. Is it water efficient? Where was it manufactured? What were the circumstances of its manufacture? And only then decide if I want to buy it or not.
From “quack doctors, egregious amounts of bills and availability of harmful medicines to capitalist manipulations”, the actor opines that the healthcare infrastructure has always been a weak point of the country. Dhanwanthary, 32, elaborates, “It has been failing in so many other ways. Just because it’s the information age, we’ve come to know about it. Just because it has affected us, we’re noticing and talking about it. But it has been failing the villages and tier-2 cities for many years. It has never been there for them.”
The Family Man actor goes on to slam the vaccine registration process, terming it “faltered and biased”. “It’s so unfair. So many people don’t have the information about it. The app is not made for differently abled people. There’s also a big disparity against people who can’t read and write English,” she says.
All this may result in fewer people getting vaccinated, which brings the fear of a third wave of the pandemic. “We’re not going to be able to avoid a third wave until the whole country is vaccinated. It doesn’t matter if I get my two shots,” ends the actor.
The past year has been a lesson for mankind, especially on the need to care for the planet. On World Environment Day, actors reveal that one thing, whose usage they have either cut down on, or increased, to benefit the environment
I’ve shifted to organic, from skin care to hair care brands, cutting down on chemicals and using cruelty-free. It’s my mum’s natural way of being. When I started focusing on it, I realised most of her housekeeping habits kept the environment in mind. Waste segregation has been the norm at home. I’ve also shifted to glass, no plastic.
Text: Rishabh Suri