Nikita Ghag conferred Dadasaheb Phalke Award for animal rights advocacy

Whether you want to save tigers in India, elephants in Africa, sharks in California, whales in Japan or dogs and cats in your own streets, Nikita Ghag of DAWA is one woman who will speak out for them. An actress by profession, Nikita Ghag is a vocal advocate for animal rights and has been speaking out on how it's possible to be fashionable while not harming animals.

Ghag is a writer, filmmaker and wildlife conservationist. She believes in cruelty-free living and spreads awareness on the same. For her activism and her advocacy of adopting pets besides rescuing and rehabilitating them with her "Kill The Fear" initiative to sensitize school children to animal adoptions, she has been awarded the prestigious Dadasaheb Phalke Award.

Animal safety directly affect human health and welfare. The pandemic is a time to remember how animals feel when they are locked up in zoos or tied up in chains. Rescuing and adopting pets brings into our lives some extra-special moments, as you and the rescue have both found each other.

Ghag is a vocal proponent for animal rights and has appealed to politicians to pass legislations to improve the conditions of millions of animals.

Ghag believes her work has just begun. "We are still a long way away from building a harmonious relationship between humanity and the animal world," she reasons. "We humans should understand that our future totally rests on protecting biodiversity, conservation of forests and oceans, raising awareness of climate change - in respecting Earth."

What is the need of the hour? Social punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way. "Treat animals as living beings," Ghag quotes Martin Luther King.. "That is what they are. If we cannot adopt or rescue, at least stop the cruelty in our own small way. That's a step towards saving the Earth for our own children."