Kashmiri girl features in Hyderabad school textbook for campaign to clean Dal Lake
SRINAGAR:THE story of a sevenyear-old Jannat, who has been cleaning Jammu and Kashmir’s Dal Lake in Srinagar for two years, has been published in a textbook of a Hyderabad-based school.
Her Dal cleaning goes popular in Hindi school book “Medha” and title of the story is “Jannat Ki Jannat”.
Jannat’s father Tariq Ahmad said, “I got a call from my friend in Hyderabad who said that my daughter’s name has been included in a school textbook. It was a proud moment for me.”
“A video of Jannat cleaning the lake had gone viral in 2018 and even Prime Minister Narendra Modi had lauded her efforts on Twitter and also spoke about it on his radio talk show Mann ki Baat,” he added.
Jannat, a Class 3 student of Linton Hallpublic School, has been regularly spending time cleaning the lake in the past two years along with her father. “I was inspired by my father to clean the lake. All recognition which I am getting is due to him,” she said.
“Jannat is being praised by everybody. India’s PM also praised her on broadcasting programme Mann ki Baat. You also praise her and try to be like her,” mentions the book. Ahmad says that her daughter was concerned about the pollution in the lake and wanted to do something about it. He said that he was motivated by a foreign national to clean the lake. “I was rowing a boat along with a foreigner in the interiors of the lake when he refused to dump a cigarette bud into the lake and wrapped it in a piece of paper and kept it in his pocket. That incident changed me and made me realise that everybody has to contribute to clean the lake,” he added.
He said that his daughter is now more concerned about the cleanliness of her surroundings. “She gets angry when she sees anybody smoking or littering around the lake,” he said adding that Jannat is now inspiring a lot of people.