There was comment to my Earth Day Competition post (the one which no one is participating!!!) that environmental awareness should be taught to kids, catch them young the person (who happens to be mr mom!!) says.

Remember there lines
Bits of paper, bits of paper
Lying on the ground
Makes the place untidy, makes the place untidy
Pick them up, pick them up

How old where you when you learnt those lines? 3 years? And then came science classes where we learnt about pollution, environment and its protection, all the way from 1st standard till about 6th. And then the syllabus turns from real-life to scientific, all the tricks of trigonometry, the permutations and combinations of chemistry, the history of the world and slowly we leave track of the happenings and awareness that needs to be cultivated in young minds. After the 10+2 years of rigourous schooling, the young minds spread out their wings in the world of engineering, medicine, law and whatever and in these colleges they dig into an age-old curriculum that has not seen any changes. The basics are forever the same but they need to be molded to suit the changing world.
Currently there are numerous law institutes in India, but surprisingly only 2 places offer something relevant to environmental law. The engineering colleges teach environmental engineering and on ways of treating waste-water but there is no protection of environment taught.
Imagine a scenario like this, one of these sewage cleaning trucks dump their waste every night in the vacant land owned by the sewage company owner next to your house, what do you do? First, fight with the dumper guy, and then go ahead and complain to the local municipal people or whomever and then what next? Complain to the police station? And incase you want to go to the courts you need to be represented by a lawyer and I bet you don’t want the black-coat guy defending the local rowdy to represent your case, or do you go to the guy who represented your friend’s cousin’s divorce? Or the person who handled your grandfather’s estate? You need someone who knows the environment and is passionate about it to represent you. So where are these environmental lawyers to fight against the big time polluters in our country? Or do you let the bunch of learned men at the panchayat let companies like Coca-Cola continue exploiting the groundwater? The panchayat needs the money and jobs companies like Coca-Cola bring to the neighborhood but do they know about the effects of groundwater exploitation in a fertile land, in God’s own country? Does anyone know it? Is anyone bothered? Or are we too engrossed in the growing economy that we turn a blind eye to the environment?
Educating people is sure a must, and it is done at the young ages and all we need is a curriculum for continuing the teaching and learning process all through and specialized programs for the same at college level. That is my take.