Water Warriors

The five rivers that gave Punjab its name are mostly gone. The Sutlej runs polluted past Ludhiana. The Ravi's water is unusable. The Beas takes on industrial waste as you watch.

Water Warriors begins with Dr. Manjeet Singh, who finished his PhD in South India and came home with a sentence stuck in his head: "We don't have five rivers." One Sunday he walked down to the Sutlej alone and started picking up plastic. He posted it on Instagram. People joined him. Today, Water Warriors Punjab stands on the banks of the Sutlej, the Ravi, and the Beas every weekend, refusing to let the rivers be forgotten.

The film also goes into the villages of Ludhiana and Abohar, where the cost is written on bodies and orchards. A 17-year-old with white hair. A 13-year-old with the joints of an old woman. Eleven cancer deaths in one village in a single year. Sixty percent of the kinnow orchards in what was once called the California of Punjab, dried up.

Food and trade expert Devinder Sharma names the design that nobody in power wants to admit: a clean river grows nothing. A poisoned one grows the GDP three times over.

A Sikhlens documentary directed by Gurdeep Dhaliwal.