Rajendra Singh
Encyclopedia
Rajendra Singh is a well known water conservationist from Alwar district
, Rajasthan
in India
. Also known as "waterman of India", he won the Ramon Magsaysay Award for community leadership in 2001 for his pioneering work in community-based
efforts in water harvesting and water management
. He runs an NGO called 'Tarun Bharat Sangh' (TBS), which was founded in 1975. The NGO based in village Kishori-Bhikampura in Thanagazi tehsil, near Sariska Tiger Reserve
, has been instrumental in fighting the slow bureaucracy, mining lobby and has helped villagers take charge of water management in their semi-arid
area as it lies close to Thar Desert
, through the use of johad
, rainwater storage tanks, check dam
s and other time-tested as well as path-breaking techniques. Starting from a single village in 1985, over the years TBS helped build over 8,600 johads and other water conservation structures to collect rainwater for the dry seasons, has brought water back to over 1,000 villages and revived five rivers in Rajasthan, Arvari
, Ruparel, Sarsa, Bhagani and Jahajwali.
He is one of the members of the National Ganga River Basin Authority
(NGRBA) under Ministry of Environment, Govt. of India, which was set up in 2009, by the Government of India
as an empowered planning, financing, monitoring and coordinating authority for the Ganga River, in exercise of the powers conferred under the Environment (Protection) Act,1986. . In 2008, The Guardian
named him amongst its list of "50 people who could save the planet".
in Uttar Pradesh
near Meerut. Both sides of his Rajput
family belong to the zamindari tradition, and he was the eldest of seven siblings. His father was an agriculturist and looked over their 60 acre
s of land in the village and where Singh did his early schooling.
An important event in his life came in 1974, when still in high school, Ramesh Sharma, a member of Gandhi Peace Foundation visited their family home in Meerut, this opened up young Rajendra's mind, to issues of village improvement, as Sharma went about cleaning the village, he opened a vachnalaya (library) and even got involved in settling local conflicts, soon he involved Rajendra into alcoholism eradication program. Another important influence was English language teacher in school, Pratap Singh, who started discussing politics and social issues with his students after class. Right at the time Emergency was imposed in the year 1975, making him aware about the issues of democracy and formulate independent views. After passing out of high school he joined 'Bhartiya Rishikul Ayurvedic Mahavidyalaya College' in Baraut
also in Bagpat district, and received a degree in Ayurvedic Medicine and Surgery. After which he enrolled for post graduation in Hindi literature, at another college in Baraut, affiliated with Allahabad University
. However right through his college years, Indian was going the ferment of Emergency. He became the leader of local chapter of Chatra Yuva Sangarsh Vahini, a student activism organisation founded by Jaiprakash Narayan (Magsaysay Award, 1965), though after Jaiprakash fell ill, the internal power politics, disillusioned him.
, from where he was appointed to looked over adult education
schools in Dausa district
in Rajasthan. Meanwhile, he joined Tarun Bharat Sangha (Young India Association) or TBS,an organization formed by officer and students of Jaipur University to aid victims of a campus fire. Subsequently, after three years when he became the General Secretary of organisation, he questioned the organisation, which had been dabbling with various issues, for its inadequacy in having a substantial impact, finally in the 1984 the entire board resigned leaving the organization to him. One of the first task he took up was working a group nomad blacksmiths, who though travelled from village to village has little support from anyone. This exposure inspired him to work closely with people. However back at work, he was feeling increasingly frustrated by the apathy of his superiors towards developmental issues and his own inability to have a larger impact, he left his job in 1984. He sold all his household goods for Rs 23,000 and took a bus ticket for the last stop, on boarded bus going into interior of Rajasthan, along with him were four friends from Tarun Bharat Sangha. The last stop turned out to be Kishori village in Thanagazi tehsil in Alwar district
, and the day was October 2, 1985. After initial skepticism, the villagers of neighboring village Bhikampura accepted him, and here they found a place to stay. Soon, he started a small Ayurvedic medicine practice in nearby village Gopalpura, while his colleges went out about promoting education in the villages.
Alwar district, which once had a grain market, was at the time largely dry and barren, as years of deforestation and mining had led to dwindling water table, minimal rainfall followed by floods. Another reason was the slow abandoning of traditional water conservation techniques, like building check dams, or johad, instead villagers started relying on "modern" bore wells, which simply sucked the ground water up. But consistent use meant that these bored wells had to be dug deeper and deeper with a few years, pushing underground water table further down each time, till they went dry in ecologically fragile Aravalis. At this point he met a village elder, Mangu Lal Patel, who argued "water was a bigger issue to address in rural Rajasthan than education". He chided him work with his hands rather than behaving like "educated" city folks who came, studied and then went back; later encouraged him to work on a johad
, earthen check dams, which have been traditionally used to store rainwater and recharge groundwater, a technique which had been abandoned in previous decades. As a result, the area had no ground water since previous five years and was officially declared a "dark zone". Though Rajendra wanted to learn the tradition techniques from local farmers about water conservation, his other city friends were reluctant to work manually and parted ways. Eventually with the help of a few local youths he started desilt
ing the Gopalpura johad, lying neglected after years of disuse. When the monsoon
arrived that year, the johad filled up and soon wells which had been dry for years had water. Villagers pitching and in the next three years, it made it 15 feet deep.
These facilitated a rise in the groundwater levels and helped turn the area into a "white zone". So much so that the Forest Department invited the NGO to take an active part in the park's management.
Tarun Ashram in Kishori-Bhikampura in Thanagazi tehsil bordering the Sariska sanctuary, became the headquarters of Tarun Bharat Sangha. He started on his first padayatra
(walkathon) through the villages of the area in 1986, educating to rebuild village old check dams. Yet their bigger success was yet to come, as inspired by the walkathon and success at Gopalpura, 20 km away, in 1986, people of Bhanota-Kolyala village with through shramdaan (voluntary labour) and with the help of TBS volunteers, constructed a johad at the source of a dried Arvari River
, following this villages that lay in its catchment area
, and along it also built tiny earthen dams, with largest being a 244-meter-long and 7-meter-high concrete dam in the Aravalli hills; eventually when the number of dams reached 375, the river started to flow again in 1990, after remaining dry for over 60 years. Yet the battle was far from over, even after constructing johads, the water level in the ponds and lakes around Sariska didn't go up as expected, that it went they discovered that missing water got evaporated from mining pits left unfilled by the miners after their operations in the area. A legal battle ensued, they filed public interest petition in the Supreme Court, which in 1991 banned mining in the Aravallis. Then in May 1992, Ministry of Environment and Forests notification banned mining in the Aravalli hill system all together, and 470 mines operating within the Sariska sanctuary buffer area and periphery were closed. Gradually TBS built 115 earthen and concrete structures within the sanctuary and 600 other structures in the buffer and peripheral zones. The efforts soon paid off, by 1995 Aravri became a perennial
river. The river was awarded the `International River Prize', and in March 2000, then President, K. R. Narayanan visited the area to present the "Down to Earth
— Joseph. C. John Award" to the villagers. In the coming years, rivers like Ruparel, Sarsa, Bhagani and Jahajwali were revived after remaining dry for decades. Abandoned villages in the areas got populated and farming activities could be resumed once again, in hundreds of drought-prone villages in neighbouring districts of Jaipur, Dausa, Sawai Madhopur, Bharatpur and Karauli, where work of TBS gradually spread.
By 2001, TBS had spread over an area of 6,500 sq km, including also parts of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh. It had built 4,500 earthen check dams, or johads, to collect rainwater in 850 villages in 11 districts of Rajasthan, and he was awarded the Magsaysay Award for Community Leadship in the same year. Reforestation has been taken up by numerous village communities, and Gram sabha have been set up especially to look after community resources. A notable example is the Bhairondev Lok Vanyajeev Abhyaranya (people's sanctuary), spread over 12 sq. km near Bhanota-Kolyala village at the head of Arvari. He has also been organizing Pani Pachayat or Water Parliament in distant viilages in Rajasthan to make people aware of the tradition water conservation wisdom, the urgency of groundwater recharge for maintaining underground aquifer
s and advocating community control over natural resources.
He also played a pivotal role in stopping the controversial Loharinag Pala Hydro Power Project
over river Bhagirathi, the headstream of the Ganges River in 2006, even as G. D. Agrawal
, environmentalist from IIT Kanpur went on a hunger strike .
In 2009, he led a pada yatra
(walkathon), a march of a group of environmentalist and NGOs, through Mumbai
city along the endangered Mithi river
.
whcih promotes access to water. The organization has been recognized for its success in revitalizing rivers, renewing groundwater supplies, and granting access to clean water to people who formerly had no access.
Interviews
Alwar District
Alwar District is a district in Rajasthan, a state in northern India, with capital in the city of Alwar.The district is bounded on the north by Haryana state, and on the east by Bharatpur, on the south by Dausa, and on the west by Jaipur districts....
, Rajasthan
Rajasthan
Rājasthān the land of Rajasthanis, , is the largest state of the Republic of India by area. It is located in the northwest of India. It encompasses most of the area of the large, inhospitable Great Indian Desert , which has an edge paralleling the Sutlej-Indus river valley along its border with...
in India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
. Also known as "waterman of India", he won the Ramon Magsaysay Award for community leadership in 2001 for his pioneering work in community-based
Community-based conservation
Community-based conservation is a res conservation movements that emerged in the 1980s through escalating protests and subsequent dialogue with local communities affected by international attempts to protect the biodiversity of the earth. Older conservation movements disregarded the interests of...
efforts in water harvesting and water management
Water management
Water management is the activity of planning, developing, distributing and managing the optimum use of water resources. In an ideal world. water management planning has regard to all the competing demands for water and seeks to allocate water on an equitable basis to satisfy all uses and demands...
. He runs an NGO called 'Tarun Bharat Sangh' (TBS), which was founded in 1975. The NGO based in village Kishori-Bhikampura in Thanagazi tehsil, near Sariska Tiger Reserve
Sariska Tiger Reserve
The Sariska Tiger Reserve is a national park in India located in the Alwar district of the state of Rajasthan. The topography of Sariska supports scrub-thorn arid forests, dry deciduous forests, rocks and grasses. This area was a hunting preserve of the erstwhile Alwar state and it was declared a...
, has been instrumental in fighting the slow bureaucracy, mining lobby and has helped villagers take charge of water management in their semi-arid
Semi-arid
A semi-arid climate or steppe climate describes climatic regions that receive precipitation below potential evapotranspiration, but not extremely...
area as it lies close to Thar Desert
Thar Desert
The Thar Desert |Punjab]] province. The Cholistan Desert adjoins the Thar desert spreading into Pakistani Punjab province.-Location and description:...
, through the use of johad
Johad
A johad is a rainwater storage tank principally used in the state of Rajasthan, India, that collects and store water throughout the year, to be used for the drinking purpose by humans and cattle. In many parts of the state the annual rainfall is very low and the water can be unpleasant to drink...
, rainwater storage tanks, check dam
Check dam
A check dam is a small dam, which can be either temporary or permanent, built across a minor channel, swale, bioswale, or drainage ditch. Similar to drop structures in purpose, they reduce erosion and gullying in the channel and allow sediments and pollutants to settle. They also lower the speed of...
s and other time-tested as well as path-breaking techniques. Starting from a single village in 1985, over the years TBS helped build over 8,600 johads and other water conservation structures to collect rainwater for the dry seasons, has brought water back to over 1,000 villages and revived five rivers in Rajasthan, Arvari
Arvari River
Arvari river is a small river in the Indian state of Rajasthan. The 90 km long river, flows through the Alwar District of Rajasthan. It was revived in 1990, after remaining dry for 60 years...
, Ruparel, Sarsa, Bhagani and Jahajwali.
He is one of the members of the National Ganga River Basin Authority
National Ganga River Basin Authority
National Ganga River Basin Authority is a financing, planning, implementing, monitoring and coordinating authority for the Ganges River, functioning under the Ministry of Environment of India...
(NGRBA) under Ministry of Environment, Govt. of India, which was set up in 2009, by the Government of India
Government of India
The Government of India, officially known as the Union Government, and also known as the Central Government, was established by the Constitution of India, and is the governing authority of the union of 28 states and seven union territories, collectively called the Republic of India...
as an empowered planning, financing, monitoring and coordinating authority for the Ganga River, in exercise of the powers conferred under the Environment (Protection) Act,1986. . In 2008, The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
named him amongst its list of "50 people who could save the planet".
Early life and education
Rajendra Singh was born at village Daula in Bagpat districtBagpat District
Baghpat district is one of the 71 districts of Uttar Pradesh state of India, and Baghpat town is the district headquarters. This district covers an area of 1321 km². The district has a population of 1,163,991.-Economy:...
in Uttar Pradesh
Uttar Pradesh
Uttar Pradesh abbreviation U.P. , is a state located in the northern part of India. With a population of over 200 million people, it is India's most populous state, as well as the world's most populous sub-national entity...
near Meerut. Both sides of his Rajput
Rajput
A Rajput is a member of one of the patrilineal clans of western, central, northern India and in some parts of Pakistan. Rajputs are descendants of one of the major ruling warrior classes in the Indian subcontinent, particularly North India...
family belong to the zamindari tradition, and he was the eldest of seven siblings. His father was an agriculturist and looked over their 60 acre
Acre
The acre is a unit of area in a number of different systems, including the imperial and U.S. customary systems. The most commonly used acres today are the international acre and, in the United States, the survey acre. The most common use of the acre is to measure tracts of land.The acre is related...
s of land in the village and where Singh did his early schooling.
An important event in his life came in 1974, when still in high school, Ramesh Sharma, a member of Gandhi Peace Foundation visited their family home in Meerut, this opened up young Rajendra's mind, to issues of village improvement, as Sharma went about cleaning the village, he opened a vachnalaya (library) and even got involved in settling local conflicts, soon he involved Rajendra into alcoholism eradication program. Another important influence was English language teacher in school, Pratap Singh, who started discussing politics and social issues with his students after class. Right at the time Emergency was imposed in the year 1975, making him aware about the issues of democracy and formulate independent views. After passing out of high school he joined 'Bhartiya Rishikul Ayurvedic Mahavidyalaya College' in Baraut
Baraut
Baraut is a city and a small municipal board in Baghpat district, Uttar Pradesh, India. Previously it was under Meerut district which was bifurcated into Meerut and Baghpat districts. At present it is a education hub for the villages around Baraut....
also in Bagpat district, and received a degree in Ayurvedic Medicine and Surgery. After which he enrolled for post graduation in Hindi literature, at another college in Baraut, affiliated with Allahabad University
Allahabad University
Allahabad University , is a premier Central University located in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, India. Its origins lie in the Muir Central College, named after Lt...
. However right through his college years, Indian was going the ferment of Emergency. He became the leader of local chapter of Chatra Yuva Sangarsh Vahini, a student activism organisation founded by Jaiprakash Narayan (Magsaysay Award, 1965), though after Jaiprakash fell ill, the internal power politics, disillusioned him.
Career
After completing his studies, he joined government service in 1980, and started his career as a National Service Volunteer for education in JaipurJaipur
Jaipur , also popularly known as the Pink City, is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Rajasthan. Founded on 18 November 1727 by Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II, the ruler of Amber, the city today has a population of more than 3.1 million....
, from where he was appointed to looked over adult education
Adult education
Adult education is the practice of teaching and educating adults. Adult education takes place in the workplace, through 'extension' school or 'school of continuing education' . Other learning places include folk high schools, community colleges, and lifelong learning centers...
schools in Dausa district
Dausa district
Dausa District is a district of Rajasthan state in western India. The city of Dausa is the district headquarters. Dausa District has a population of 1,316,790 , an area of 2950 km², and a population density of 384 persons per km² with 62.75 % literacy rate...
in Rajasthan. Meanwhile, he joined Tarun Bharat Sangha (Young India Association) or TBS,an organization formed by officer and students of Jaipur University to aid victims of a campus fire. Subsequently, after three years when he became the General Secretary of organisation, he questioned the organisation, which had been dabbling with various issues, for its inadequacy in having a substantial impact, finally in the 1984 the entire board resigned leaving the organization to him. One of the first task he took up was working a group nomad blacksmiths, who though travelled from village to village has little support from anyone. This exposure inspired him to work closely with people. However back at work, he was feeling increasingly frustrated by the apathy of his superiors towards developmental issues and his own inability to have a larger impact, he left his job in 1984. He sold all his household goods for Rs 23,000 and took a bus ticket for the last stop, on boarded bus going into interior of Rajasthan, along with him were four friends from Tarun Bharat Sangha. The last stop turned out to be Kishori village in Thanagazi tehsil in Alwar district
Alwar District
Alwar District is a district in Rajasthan, a state in northern India, with capital in the city of Alwar.The district is bounded on the north by Haryana state, and on the east by Bharatpur, on the south by Dausa, and on the west by Jaipur districts....
, and the day was October 2, 1985. After initial skepticism, the villagers of neighboring village Bhikampura accepted him, and here they found a place to stay. Soon, he started a small Ayurvedic medicine practice in nearby village Gopalpura, while his colleges went out about promoting education in the villages.
Alwar district, which once had a grain market, was at the time largely dry and barren, as years of deforestation and mining had led to dwindling water table, minimal rainfall followed by floods. Another reason was the slow abandoning of traditional water conservation techniques, like building check dams, or johad, instead villagers started relying on "modern" bore wells, which simply sucked the ground water up. But consistent use meant that these bored wells had to be dug deeper and deeper with a few years, pushing underground water table further down each time, till they went dry in ecologically fragile Aravalis. At this point he met a village elder, Mangu Lal Patel, who argued "water was a bigger issue to address in rural Rajasthan than education". He chided him work with his hands rather than behaving like "educated" city folks who came, studied and then went back; later encouraged him to work on a johad
Johad
A johad is a rainwater storage tank principally used in the state of Rajasthan, India, that collects and store water throughout the year, to be used for the drinking purpose by humans and cattle. In many parts of the state the annual rainfall is very low and the water can be unpleasant to drink...
, earthen check dams, which have been traditionally used to store rainwater and recharge groundwater, a technique which had been abandoned in previous decades. As a result, the area had no ground water since previous five years and was officially declared a "dark zone". Though Rajendra wanted to learn the tradition techniques from local farmers about water conservation, his other city friends were reluctant to work manually and parted ways. Eventually with the help of a few local youths he started desilt
Silt
Silt is granular material of a size somewhere between sand and clay whose mineral origin is quartz and feldspar. Silt may occur as a soil or as suspended sediment in a surface water body...
ing the Gopalpura johad, lying neglected after years of disuse. When the monsoon
Monsoon
Monsoon is traditionally defined as a seasonal reversing wind accompanied by corresponding changes in precipitation, but is now used to describe seasonal changes in atmospheric circulation and precipitation associated with the asymmetric heating of land and sea...
arrived that year, the johad filled up and soon wells which had been dry for years had water. Villagers pitching and in the next three years, it made it 15 feet deep.
These facilitated a rise in the groundwater levels and helped turn the area into a "white zone". So much so that the Forest Department invited the NGO to take an active part in the park's management.
Tarun Ashram in Kishori-Bhikampura in Thanagazi tehsil bordering the Sariska sanctuary, became the headquarters of Tarun Bharat Sangha. He started on his first padayatra
Padayatra
Padayatra is a journey undertaken by a politician and/or prominent citizens to interact more closely with different parts of society, educate them about issues concerning them and to galvanize his or her supporters...
(walkathon) through the villages of the area in 1986, educating to rebuild village old check dams. Yet their bigger success was yet to come, as inspired by the walkathon and success at Gopalpura, 20 km away, in 1986, people of Bhanota-Kolyala village with through shramdaan (voluntary labour) and with the help of TBS volunteers, constructed a johad at the source of a dried Arvari River
Arvari River
Arvari river is a small river in the Indian state of Rajasthan. The 90 km long river, flows through the Alwar District of Rajasthan. It was revived in 1990, after remaining dry for 60 years...
, following this villages that lay in its catchment area
Drainage basin
A drainage basin is an extent or an area of land where surface water from rain and melting snow or ice converges to a single point, usually the exit of the basin, where the waters join another waterbody, such as a river, lake, reservoir, estuary, wetland, sea, or ocean...
, and along it also built tiny earthen dams, with largest being a 244-meter-long and 7-meter-high concrete dam in the Aravalli hills; eventually when the number of dams reached 375, the river started to flow again in 1990, after remaining dry for over 60 years. Yet the battle was far from over, even after constructing johads, the water level in the ponds and lakes around Sariska didn't go up as expected, that it went they discovered that missing water got evaporated from mining pits left unfilled by the miners after their operations in the area. A legal battle ensued, they filed public interest petition in the Supreme Court, which in 1991 banned mining in the Aravallis. Then in May 1992, Ministry of Environment and Forests notification banned mining in the Aravalli hill system all together, and 470 mines operating within the Sariska sanctuary buffer area and periphery were closed. Gradually TBS built 115 earthen and concrete structures within the sanctuary and 600 other structures in the buffer and peripheral zones. The efforts soon paid off, by 1995 Aravri became a perennial
Perennial stream
A perennial stream or perennial river is a stream or river that has continuous flow in parts of its bed all year round during years of normal rainfall. "Perennial" streams are contrasted with "intermittent" streams which normally cease flowing for weeks or months each year, and with "ephemeral"...
river. The river was awarded the `International River Prize', and in March 2000, then President, K. R. Narayanan visited the area to present the "Down to Earth
Down To Earth (magazine)
is an Indian science and environment fortnightly, established by the in May 1992. Over the years the magazine has informed and inspired people about environmental threats facing India and the world—a dimension underplayed in mainstream media. DTE has become a reading habit in 400 of about 500...
— Joseph. C. John Award" to the villagers. In the coming years, rivers like Ruparel, Sarsa, Bhagani and Jahajwali were revived after remaining dry for decades. Abandoned villages in the areas got populated and farming activities could be resumed once again, in hundreds of drought-prone villages in neighbouring districts of Jaipur, Dausa, Sawai Madhopur, Bharatpur and Karauli, where work of TBS gradually spread.
By 2001, TBS had spread over an area of 6,500 sq km, including also parts of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh. It had built 4,500 earthen check dams, or johads, to collect rainwater in 850 villages in 11 districts of Rajasthan, and he was awarded the Magsaysay Award for Community Leadship in the same year. Reforestation has been taken up by numerous village communities, and Gram sabha have been set up especially to look after community resources. A notable example is the Bhairondev Lok Vanyajeev Abhyaranya (people's sanctuary), spread over 12 sq. km near Bhanota-Kolyala village at the head of Arvari. He has also been organizing Pani Pachayat or Water Parliament in distant viilages in Rajasthan to make people aware of the tradition water conservation wisdom, the urgency of groundwater recharge for maintaining underground aquifer
Aquifer
An aquifer is a wet underground layer of water-bearing permeable rock or unconsolidated materials from which groundwater can be usefully extracted using a water well. The study of water flow in aquifers and the characterization of aquifers is called hydrogeology...
s and advocating community control over natural resources.
He also played a pivotal role in stopping the controversial Loharinag Pala Hydro Power Project
Loharinag Pala Hydro Power Project
Loharinag Pala Hydro Power Project is a run-of-the-river hydroelectricity generating project planned by the National Thermal Power Corporation Ltd to have an output capacity of 600 MW...
over river Bhagirathi, the headstream of the Ganges River in 2006, even as G. D. Agrawal
G. D. Agrawal
Dr. G. D. Agrawal is a respected doyen of environmental engineers in India. After a long career, he continues to teach and inspire students as an Honorary Professor of Environmental Sciences at the Mahatma Gandhi Chitrakoot Gramodaya Vishwavidyalaya, in Chitrakoot, Madhya Pradesh...
, environmentalist from IIT Kanpur went on a hunger strike .
In 2009, he led a pada yatra
Yatra
' , in Hinduism and other Indian religions, generally means pilgrimage to holy places such as confluences of sacred rivers, places associated with Hindu epics such as the Mahabharata and Ramayana, and other sacred pilgrimage sites. Tīrtha-yātrā refers to a pilgrimage to a holy site, and is...
(walkathon), a march of a group of environmentalist and NGOs, through Mumbai
Mumbai
Mumbai , formerly known as Bombay in English, is the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is the most populous city in India, and the fourth most populous city in the world, with a total metropolitan area population of approximately 20.5 million...
city along the endangered Mithi river
Mithi River
The Mithi River is a river in Salsette Island, the island of the city of Mumbai. It is a confluence of tail water discharges of Powai and Vihar lakes. The river is seasonal and rises during the monsoons. The overflowing lakes also contribute to the river flow which is stopped by a dam in other times...
.
Tarun Bharat Sangh
Since 1985 Rajendra Singh has directed Tarun Bharat Sangh, a non-governmental organizationNon-governmental organization
A non-governmental organization is a legally constituted organization created by natural or legal persons that operates independently from any government. The term originated from the United Nations , and is normally used to refer to organizations that do not form part of the government and are...
whcih promotes access to water. The organization has been recognized for its success in revitalizing rivers, renewing groundwater supplies, and granting access to clean water to people who formerly had no access.
External links
- Rajendra Singh, Profile at Tarun Bharat Sangh
- Ramon Magsaysay Award Citation (2001)
- Water man of Rajasthan
Interviews
- Why "Gandhi of Water" Rajendra Singh Is Traveling the Length of the Ganges River treehugger
- An Interview with Rajendra Singh
- Hindi-language 15-minute video interview with Rajendra Singh on the Ganga Action Plan: part 1, part 2