2018 was the year when Greta Thunberg took the world by storm. The Swedish climate change activist, then 15 years old, started Fridays for Future, which calls itself as “a global people’s movement for climate justice”.
In India, Disha Ravi, a college student at Mount Carmel College in Bengaluru, plunged in. She started Fridays for Future India, coordinating strikes in different areas in the city every Friday, as she told Citizen Matters in 2019.
Her motivation to become a climate activist stemmed from watching her grandparents, who are farmers, struggle with the effects of climate change, she said in an interview with Auto Report Africa in 2020.
Her concern for farmers has now landed her behind bars.
As farmer protests sweep north India and put the Narendra Modi government under pressure, on February 13, Delhi Police arrived at Ravi’s Bengaluru home and arrested her in the case related to a “toolkit” – a term activists use for a campaign information document…