When I was ah little girl, I did a language class Japanese, and it was very difficult and I feel and my mother said, What are you doing?

And I said, It's too hard, I can't do this And she said, Don't ever again tell me you can't do something So I now she regrets saying it.

So she says she says, Sometimes she says, Don't you ever think you can't do anything?

Don't you think sometimes that this is not worth doing?

But I remind her that she was the one who who told me that You can't never say you can't do anything and in fact, it's only that something which is more difficult, which is more worthwhile.

So if you think you can, you can.

So when you see something happening in front of you, what do you do?

In my case, I saw sand mining happening in front of the house where I grew up.

I've spent all my childhood holidays there.

I had, uh, I had a great deal of feeling for this place, and of course, I didn't want in any way that did.

My beach should disappear, so I saw how the land was going backwards.

I saw the sign was being eroded.

I saw these deep creators in the sand.

I saw her when we walked on the beach at night, which we used to do regularly.

We would fall into the creators.

So what do you do?

You go off course and you complain to the authorities very naively, because I knew nothing about the authorities.

As a mother of young Children on, uh, the authorities laugh atyou and they say, Well, you know, this is a beach.

There's plenty of sand assigned comes in every days.

Why are you worried?

Why you complaining?

Why you you know, just go home and look after your Children.

Don't bother about such things.

And then finally, he says, You know, we don't know who's Milingo's sand anyway.

And I say, Well, you know, it's strange because the whole village knows who's doing it.

And not only does the whole village know they've actually told me to keep away from them because they're important politicians off the area.

So he says, Well, in that case, you'll have to catch them red handed because that's the only way we're going to take action So, of course, what do you do then?

You go and stop a truck when you're told that they are, They're mining.

Signed at midnight.

Under Didn't Bobo?

Um, I don't think this is what my mother really meant on.

I don't think that when you take an issue of this kind, which nobody knows about which nobody is willing to tackle, which nobody is willing to even talk about, that you're going to get any kind of guidelines as to how you're supposed to tackle it.

Beyond these kind of big statements go catch them red handed.

Which, um, does seem now.

In hindsight, Andi didn't go well because when I stopped the truck the first time, I brought away with it and they actually stopped mining sand for repeated of time.

But when I stopped the truck the second time, the politician's son was a charge of the truck and they actually attacked me and put me in hospital with a paralyzed hand.

Um, so I didn't know at that time that this kind of issue would lead to this kind of thing.

Nobody knew it.

This is in 2004.

Uh um Then what do you do so if you are.

I mean, there's so many things that were unexpected, unseen.

CAVEATS of the unseen This is not what I had expected that I'm going to end up in hospital.

So I then started gathering data about sand mine.

Because, of course, then what you can do is give up because it's too dangerous.

Or you can decide to continue because you realize that this is an issue where someone is actually willing to attack you to this level.

So you having being told there's nothing you can do.

You start gathering data and realize that there isn't any.

So then you have to generate the data, and how do you generate the data In those days?

The only way to generate the data was by going to various sites and taking photographs, which, of course, was not a very sensible thing to do.

But that data then became the basis for the first public interest litigation on sand mining.

And so again, without knowing what I was doing without knowing too many lawyers without knowing anything about how the public interest litigation was to be filed, I fired this litigation, and in the ER, you know wild while filing litigation When your fire litigation.

This was actually not my first litigation.

My first litigation was on sand mining, so he was a noise.

Pollution and sand mining is a rural issue which happens a little bit outside the city.

Mostly noise pollution happens in the city.

But while working on both, you realize that actually, the kind off steps that you take, the tools at their disposal other same and they apply to me.

They applied to these two very different issues that I took up noise, pollution and sand mining.

But they basically come down to this that we have the low which everybody is supposed to follow, which means public interest litigation.

In India, we have advocacy, which means appealing to the good conscience off government administrators, law enforcers on we have awareness, which means bringing this issue to greater knowledge.

So this is filming for a film line in the Sand, which was made by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

It was made, so the first attack on me was in 2000 for this first was made in 2017.

So it also means that you have to keep on working at things because when you're taking up an issue without any road map without any guidelines, purely on intuition, without any knowledge, even you just have to keep trusting that you're going to take the next step in the next step on the next step on that, it was only somewhere, even if you're not sure where, Um, off course.

That's easier said than done because then, after fighting the first public interest litigation and getting an order, that sand mining fund in the whole course through districts of the state of mind, I was, you know, deep things.

Then start getting reported by the press, not because off Sandman one cares about, but because of the fact that I was attacked.

So the first reports were on the attack.

And then I was attacked the second time because after the court order banning side and started getting calls from people who were who were affected by sand mining villages.

So I realized that, and they said to me, Please come here and see you got you sitting, bombing every tower, Keep firing.

Topic investigation.

Nothing changes on the ground.

So I went there and I was attacked, took the first photographs off sand mining at a large industrials A lot more hard on in in 2010 on, I was again attacked on the intent was to kill.

There was an accident engineered accident on the bridge with 100 foot.

So again there were all kinds of influential people involved the police didn't want to help on again.

Um, my family my daughter said, Mom, you're great and all that, but you need to stay home and start cooking on, uh But again, I remember my mother saying, Don't say you can't So you keep working, you keep doing it instinctively.

And then, fortunately for me, after the first attack, we had set up a group called Mitra Movement Against Intimidation threatened revenge against activists had fired public interest litigation in the court to protect activists working in the public interest who were being threatened by vested in on the very next day again by fluke.

Because we no one knows how these things happen in this world again by fluke by some divine providence or whatever.

That case was the next day, and we got help from the court.

The other thing, which made it very clear that it's not You was working.

It's not me was working.

Its some, um, unknown way things happen is the way this accident happened that I had bean, you know, on a site visit like this, I would never drive myself.

I mind a driver be driving on.

I would be sitting back because there were journalists with me.

They were local Villagers.

With me on, we would be discussing the case.

But it so happened that after we took the photographs on the creek and got back into the car, I had this feeling that somehow things were not right and I don't know where this feeling came from.

It was completely instinctive.

And for the first and only time in my life, I told my driver I said, Please move.

I am going to drive And he was shocked.

It was surprised.

He said, Why?

And I said, I don't know.

I just think I want to drive.

My husband is a dirt track rally racer.

Driver on.

He had just a little bit before that, and of course, through all the years of our marriage, he had been giving me tips.

How to drive on these very, very mountainous hearts don't track roots on.

When we started being followed by these guys who were trying to change, who first stopped us and threatened us and then started following us on, the struck actually crashed into us.

I'm 100% certain that, firstly, we would never have escaped that lonely area.

Had I not been driving because they couldn't catch up with me on, I had to do some maneuvers off road driving to actually keep ahead of them.

When the second car came head on, a nearly crashed into us on.

Then when we got the truck, I'm also certain that that truck's instructions were to push us over the bridge.

It would have been an accident.

We would have fallen 100 feet below and they would have said, Oh, she was driving rashly.

Which is exactly what the police said when we went to the police station and they wanted to book me for rash driving rather than to book these people who were trying to kill us.

So you don't know what's going to happen.

What's going to come out of what you keep working?

I can't say this is a way that I would advise anyone.

I don't think this is what my mother meant, but nevertheless, this happened.

I learned a lot of lessons from it again.

These common issues noise, pollution and sand mining.

So how do you bring them up to four?

One way is by being attacked.

But of course, a simpler way is by simply making it more and more like with noise pollution, where there was no attack to just keep talking about it again and again and again until people get the message.

So this is training the police.

Because, of course, um, it's the enforcement authorities which ultimately going to take action.

You can get all the court orders in the world but understood have enforcement, nothing works.

And after the very first, a public interest litigation with had file on noise pollution.

My lawyer said to me that if you don't get this order banning loudspeakers in silent zones and forced, you have wasted all that time.

We've all worked pro bono for you.

Andi, I didn't know what to do, but I really as that the way waas to train the police.

And so this is in a training session with the police on their off course other ways.

As I said, teaching people conducting drives people to volunteer.

In cities like Mumbai, there are no volunteers who are just ordinary people capable of holding banners on the road.

Only they're all professionals and they can contribute professional expertise.

So they have all contributed various things.

Campaigns have bean course by advertising agencies.

Lawyers have worked three off cost people have a free of cost in every field.

And this is the public participation, an awareness that you need to generate.

So you need to generate the data in the Sosa mining.

It was photographs of illegals and mining sites and encouraging other people to tell us in the case of noise pollution, because there was no data there either.

It was actually actually getting this meter, which is such a simple device.

It's a handle device on generating the data, which was later used in the courts.

Um, this is telling people on the streets celebrating a festival, how they themselves are being affected.

They have in the city of Mumbai.

They have really stepped up.

I was shocked to know later that people who had bean my staunch adversaries later decided to try me.

And that's what makes things a public movement when it's a In the case of noise pollution, when the gun party Monday does the state government, they declare 2018 as a year off new honking in spite of the fact that they were the ones who never wanted to take noise pollution seriously.

In fact, during the first conferences, I was told I was wasting the police is time.

One police officer actually refused to speak when given the mike because, he said, You have wasted our time bringing this non issue to us.

When we have far more serious issues now they have changed their minds.

They're taking up these issues.

I'm very grateful to them.

And it's the people ultimately who make these causes.

It's up to us to create awareness, and this is creating awareness and data.

You from 2004 from the Attack the Public Interest Litigation In 2012 I presented the issue of sand mining to the U.

N for the first time on the U.

N.

Who said that, um, coastal issues with some of the most serious issues they had on their agenda didn't have any documentation on sand mining.

It took them until 2019 to come out with this report, which is the first ever global report on signed mining.

I was honored to contribute substantially to this report about the actual situation on the ground in India, which in spite of so many court orders, are still not.

We're losing sand.

We're not taking measures to um to think of the alternatives which are feasible, which the which the IittIe Bombay says that you can recycle the entire garbage dump legacy, waste what they call in Mumbai on get enough aggregate to substitute the entire signed mining off the country which they have quantified.

Both the sand developed the sand requirements as well as the garbage dump availability, which would solve so many issues at once.

The garbage issue off which India faces the air pollution issue of garbage burning.

The sand mining issue on the U.

N.

Has put these things in their report and recommended that India has the potential to lead the world in this kind of technologies.

So we have the solutions, we have the ways.

It's a question of taking an issue from something saying all the sea brings and plenty of sand to recognizing that.

No, actually, the sea doesn't bring in 20 of sand because it's a huge global issue.

There is a chance national trade that is on the U.

N.

Has taken it up.

The government of India still hasn't taken it up adequately.

We still have policies which are unenforceable, but we do have to stand up in spite of the problems that with standing up again in 2019 noise levels during the festival season was at their lowest in the last 15 years.

Since I've started recording data, um, again, this is because off people's inputs the government, the police, all of whom partnered on, most importantly, the noisemakers themselves who came to realize that, yes, it is an issue.

They have to take action.

They do have to do something.

It's very heartening to know that these things can happen from something which already knows even today.

If you ask me what's your next step?

It would be very difficult to say, because I was constantly shifting, moving, changing.

You don't know what's happening, but you have to just keep trusting, hoping for the best keep working, something happens.

So what other challenges that we face in future?

We don't know what the challenges are going to be.

Just like when I started these challenges, I didn't know what the challenges would be.

I didn't even know these were challenges.

I just did them because they happened to be there in front of me.