Meet Rajendra Singh, Waterman Of India Who Left A Government Job To Conserve Water Bodies
Unregulated exploitation of groundwater for agriculture and contamination of water sources by industrial and non-industrial waste dumping are threatening waterbodies across the country and are impacting the lives of communities depending on them.
Rajendra Singh, the waterman of India??
Rajendra Singh, a resident of Alwar district in the desert state of Rajasthan understands the impending water crisis and may be better than anyone else in this country.
Popularly known as the Waterman of India, Singh has dedicated his life to the conservation of water bodies.
Born in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, Singh, who is also a trained Ayurvedic medicine practitioner started his career with the Education Department in Jaipur, Rajasthan in 1980.
Left his job to work for rural people
In Jaipur, he also started working with Tarun Bharat Sangha, an NGO formed by officers and students of the University.
During his work with TBS, Singh got to learn about the struggles of the people of rural Rajasthan, and in 1984 decided to leave his government job to work for the betterment of their lives.
In 1985, he became the General Secretary of TBS and remains Chairman of the NGO to date.
During his interaction with the villagers in Alwar, Singh learned about how water scarcity was affecting their lives.
How borewells killed traditional?water harvesting
One of his first learnings was how borewells were adversely impacting the water cycle. As people started depending more and more on bore wells to irrigate their land instead of the traditional?johad, which were used to harvest rainwater and subsequently recharge the water table, the groundwater levels dropped.
Reviving johads?
After some research about?johads?which are concave structures that collect and store water throughout the year, Singh, with the help of some villagers managed to revive one such facility in Gopalpura, which was all but dried up due to neglect.
Since then over the years, Singh and TBS have managed to revive some 3000?johads?spread across more than 650 villages in Alwar district.
Singh's message of water conservation using traditional techniques has since spread beyond Alwar and Rajasthan to across the world.
Traditional techniques for modern problems
"It is a community-driven de-centralised water management system. The ponds in desert areas are built in such a way that it minimises evaporation. The maintenance of such?johads?is done by the community, which they had been doing traditionally," Singh told?Indiatimes.?
"To revive any waterbody that is lost, it is important to know the local rain pattern and inlets that bring water to it. It is important to separate clean and polluted water before it enters the water body," Singh said.
Large dams are not good for ecology
Over the years, Singh has also led campaigns to Save River Ganga and against building large dams on it.
"Large dams will always have an impact on the local ecology. Like in the case of the Tehri Dam, the construction of it led to large-scale silting in River Ganga and subsequent growth of algae in it, which altered the composition of the water," he said.
Global recognition for water conservation?
The waterman of India has been recognised globally for his work with honours including the 2001 Ramon Magsaysay Award For Community leadership and the 2015 Stockholm Water Prize, known as "the Nobel Prize for water" to name a few.
How the water crisis in Marathwada was created?
According to Singh, unscientific exploitation and commercial agriculture have played key roles in the growing water crisis, especially in areas like the Marathwada region in Maharashtra.
"42 of the largest dams in India are in Maharashtra and despite this, there is an acute water crisis in the state. Sugarcane and cotton are the most common commercial crops in Marathwada. The water requirements for both these crops are not in tune with the local agroecological climatic zone. The current crisis would not have been there if we had respected local ecological conditions," he explained.
He pointed out that only some areas in Rajasthan and Bijapur in Karnataka were facing water scarcity at the time of Independence, but Marathwada was pushed into a water crisis due to over-discharge, without adequate recharge.
Climate refugees, a new reality in India
"When your underground water usage is in overdraft and there is no recharge, that becomes a permanent crisis, which is what Marathwada is experiencing now," he said.
It is not a problem that is limited to Marathwada or Maharashtra but is now being experienced by most of India.
"When we gained Independence, only three per cent of the country was prone to floods and six per cent of the land was facing drought. That has now grown to thirty and sixty per cent. When African countries are facing similar conditions and people there flee to Europe, they are called Climate Refugees, this may soon become a reality in India also," he warned.
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