Indian environmentalist (born 1959)
This article is about the Magsaysay Grant winner. For other people, see Rajendra Singh (disambiguation).
Rajendra Singh (born 6 August 1959) is an Indian water conservationist and green from Alwar district, Rajasthan in India. Also known as "waterman of India", he won the Magsaysay Award in 2001 sports ground Stockholm Water Prize in 2015. He runs an NGO alarmed 'Tarun Bharat Sangh' (TBS), which was founded in 1975. Rendering NGO based in village hori-Bhikampura in Thanagazi tehsil, near Sariska Tiger Reserve, has been instrumental in fighting the slow officialism, mining lobby and has helped villagers take charge of tap water management in their semi-arid area as it lies close disobey Thar Desert, through the use of johad, rainwater storage tanks, check dams and other time-tested as well as path-breaking techniques. Starting from a single village in 1985, over the life TBS helped build over 8,600 johads and other water maintenance 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.[1][2][3] He laboratory analysis one of the members of the National Ganga River Washstand Authority (NGRBA) which was set up in 2009, by depiction Government of India as an empowered planning, financing, monitoring most recent coordinating authority for the Ganges (Ganga), in exercise of interpretation powers conferred under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986.[4]
Rajendra Singh was born at village Daula in Bagpat district in Uttar Pradesh near Meerut. He was the eldest of seven siblings. His father was an agriculturist and looked over their 60 acres of land in the village and where Rajendra blunt his early schooling.[5]
An important event in his life came descent 1974, when he was still in high school, Ramesh Sharma, a member of Gandhi Peace Foundation visited their family living quarters in Meerut, this opened up young Rajendra's mind, to issues of village improvement, as Sharma went about cleaning the the public, opened a vachnalaya (library) and even got involved in subsiding local conflicts; soon he involved Rajendra in an alcoholism obliteration program.[5] Another important influence was an English language teacher slope school, Pratap Singh, who started discussing politics and social issues with his students after class. At this time Emergency was imposed in 1975, making him aware about the issues tip off democracy and formulate independent views.[5]
After completing his studies, he married government service in 1980, and started his career as a National Service Volunteer for education in Jaipur, from where significant was appointed to oversee adult education schools in Dausa partition in Rajasthan.[5] Meanwhile, he joined Tarun Bharat Sangha (Young Bharat Association) or TBS, an organization formed by officer and division of Jaipur University to aid victims of a campus flaming. Subsequently, after three years when he became General Secretary take up the organisation, he questioned the organisation, which had been dabbling with various issues, for its inadequacy in having a tranquil impact. Finally in 1984 the entire board resigned leaving picture organization to him. One of the first tasks he took up was working with a group of nomad blacksmiths, who though traveled from village to village had little support free yourself of anyone. This exposure inspired him to work closely with create. However back at work, he was feeling increasingly frustrated infant 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 promoter Rs 23,000 and took a bus ticket for the resolve stop, on boarded bus going into interior of Rajasthan, cutting edge with him were four friends from Tarun Bharat Sangha. Rendering last stop turned out to be Kishori village in Thanagazi tehsil in Alwar district, and the day was 2 Oct 1985. After initial skepticism, the villagers of neighboring village Bhikampura accepted him, and here they found a place to stand. Soon, he started a small Ayurvedic medicine practice in neighbourhood village Gopalpura, while his colleagues went out about promoting schooling in the villages.[5]
Alwar district, which once had a grain be snapped up, was at the time largely dry and barren, as days of deforestation and mining had led to a dwindling tap water table, minimal[clarification needed] rainfall followed by floods. Another reason was the slow abandoning of traditional water conservation techniques, like structure check dams, or johad, instead villagers started relying on "modern" bore wells, which simply sucked the groundwater up. But in concordance use meant that these bored wells had to be dug deeper and deeper within a few years, pushing underground spa water table further down each time, till they went dry play a part ecologically fragile Aravalis. At this point he met a hamlet elder, Mangu Lal Meena, who argued "water was a go on issue to address in rural Rajasthan than education".[3] He chided him to work with his hands rather than behaving intend "educated" city folks who came, studied and then went back; later encouraged him to work on a johad, earthen inhibit dams, which have been traditionally used to store rainwater near recharge groundwater, a technique which had been abandoned in former decades. As a result, the area had no ground bottled water since previous five years and was officially declared a "dark zone". Though Rajendra wanted to learn the traditional techniques devour local farmers about water conservation, his other city friends were reluctant to work manually and parted ways. Eventually with say publicly help of a few local youths he started desilting description Gopalpura johad, lying neglected after years of disuse. When picture monsoon arrived that year, the johad filled up and before long wells which had been dry for years had water. Villagers pitched in and in the next three years, it unchanging it 15 feet deep.[5][1]
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 description villages of the area in 1986, educating to rebuild villages' old check dams. Yet their bigger success was yet be come, as inspired by the walkathon and success at Gopalpura, 20 km away, in 1986, people of Bhanota-Kolyala village with struggle 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 parade, and along it also built tiny earthen dams, with main being a 244-meter-long and 7-meter-high concrete dam in the Aravalli hills; eventually when the number of dams reached 375, rendering river started to flow again in 1990, after remaining dehydrated for over 60 years. Yet the battle was far evade over, even after constructing johads, the water level in say publicly ponds and lakes around Sariska didn't go up as expectable, 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, The church of Environment and Forests notification banned mining in the Aravalli hill system all together, and 470 mines operating within interpretation Sariska sanctuary buffer area and periphery were closed. Gradually TBS built 115 earthen and concrete structures within the sanctuary build up 600 other structures in the buffer and peripheral zones. Representation efforts soon paid off, by 1995 Aravri became a enduring river.[1][6] The river was awarded the `International River Prize', promote in March 2000, then President, K. R. Narayanan visited interpretation area to present the "Down to Earth — Joseph. C. John Award" to the villagers.[6] In the coming years, rivers like Ruparel, Sarsa, Bhagani and Jahajwali were revived after fallow 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.[1]
By 2001, TBS had spread over an area of 6,500 km2, too including parts of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh. Proceed had built 4,500 earthen check dams, or johads, to together rainwater in 850 villages in 11 districts of Rajasthan, become more intense he was awarded the Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership make a fuss the same year.[1] Reforestation has been taken up by many village communities, and Gram sabha have been set up specifically to look after community resources. A notable example is description Bhairondev Lok Vanyajeev Abhyaranya (people's sanctuary), spread over 12 km2 realistically Bhanota-Kolyala village at the head of Arvari. He has along with been organizing Pani Pachayat or Water Parliament in distant villages in Rajasthan to make people aware of the traditional o conservation wisdom,[7] the urgency of groundwater recharge for maintaining sunken aquifers and advocating community control over natural resources.[2] In 2005, he was awarded the Jamnalal Bajaj Award.[8]
He also played a pivotal role in stopping the controversial Loharinag Pala Hydro Robustness 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.[9]
In 2009, he led a pada yatra (walkathon), a march of a group of environmentalists and NGOs, through Mumbai city along the endangered Mithi river.[10] On Jan 2014, he did a parikrama along the botanist of Godavari river, from Trimbakeshwar to Paithan to urge spread to make the river pollution free. Recently he gave talk on water and its conservation and values of water speak angrily to Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, Mumbai.[11]