The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen last December, attended by over 15,000 heads of state, environment ministers and other officials, failed to reach any accord or provide a roadmap for reducing emissions and combating climate change. But that hasn’t deterred one spirited missionary from continuing to crusade against the rising tide of carbon emissions. Environmentalist M.B. Nirmal, founder of the Chennai-based ExNoRa (‘Excellent, Novel, Radical’) Interna-tional (EI) who attended the conference, presents a simple solution to save the planet, which he believes is the moral responsibility of every individual.
“The biggest advantage India has is its population and our human resources must be mobilised to solve the problems we face today. Every individual should practice the code of self sacrifice which includes planting trees, creating awareness campaigns and communal harmony, fighting pollution and corruption, reducing oil consumption, promoting vegetarianism and leading a simple life. Governments will follow in the people’s footsteps,” says Nirmal, who posts details of his voluntary sacrifice movement on the website www.voluntarysacrifice.org.
Founded in 1989, Exnora International is a non-government organisation focused upon people’s participation in ecology and clean environment at the grassroots level, and empowering communities to attain this objective. The idea took root when Nirmal’s family lost all their wealth in business and were forced to move to a slum dwelling in 1971, even as Nirmal landed a job as a despatch clerk in the Indian Overseas Bank (IOB) which has its headquarters in Chennai. Mortified by the pools of sewage and garbage dumps commonplace in slums, he began mobilising and motivating slum dwellers to transform their environment into a clean and green model community.
With Nirmal’s call to arms began a sanitation, upgradation and greening campaign which led to the formation of EI in 1989. As a first step, several community-based organisations christ-ened Civic Exnora were started in Chennai’s residential communities including slums, to address the problem of solid waste by recycling it into compost. The idea rapidly spread to other states and over the past two decades, EI has grown into a nationwide movement comprising over 200 satellite organisations under the parent body, Exnora Innovators Club. Among them: Home Exnora, Organic Farming Exnora, Student Exnora and Heart Exnora.
“Today we have one million volunteers working in Exnora’s various networks and divisions, and anyone willing to serve society can join the Exnora Innovators Club,” says Nirmal, a commerce and law graduate of Madras University. Extraordinarily, EI was nurtured by Nirmal parallely with a career spanning 36 years with IOB. He served as chief manager of IOB’s major branches in Chennai and also headed its Hong Kong branch before opting for voluntary retirement in 2000.
And there’s more to him than eco-evangelism. Nirmal is also an excellent public speaker, much sought after for his motivational lectures. Currently a successful trainer of bank managers and staff countrywide, Nirmal’s brain resou-rce development programme (7th Sense) has top level management takers from corporates in Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong.
Nevertheless his major preoccupation is to augment and diversify EI activities in the longer war for the environment and resistance to climate change. “My goal is to be a leading light to guide people in the right direction. Future plans are to start an office in Coimbatore and with the support of the US government, an Exnora branch will be started in Washington by June 2010. I’m confident that with sufficient will, my dream of a clean, green and happy environment will be realised,” says Nirmal.
Amen!
Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)