You have studied literature and Ayurveda, what led you to start working on water and other related issues?

When I came to Gopalpura village in Alwar in 1985, a disease called rathondi (night blindness) was prevalent here due to malnutrition. So, I started providing treatment for it. Soon, I realised that the community was not educated, so I started a school. My work on medicine and education went on for seven months.

From Gopalpura, how did you start working in other villages? And what effects of water conservation work did you see in the region?

Now, when water came back to the village, the villagers called everyone who had migrated for work back home—there was reverse migration. They started farming on the land again, and when they had their first crop, the villagers told all their relatives how they had been able to get water and start farming. Those relatives started inviting me to their villages. From Gopalpura, the water conservation work started spreading to Karauli, Dholpur, Sawai Madhopur, Bharatpur, and so on. I started three types of yatras : The first was ‘ Jal Bachao Johad Banao ‘ (save water, practice water harvesting); the second was ‘ Gram Swavalamban ’ (village self-reliance); and the third was ‘ Ped Lagao Ped Bachao ‘ (plant trees, save trees). Through these yatras , and by using existing social networks, we scaled up the work.

What were some of the challenges you faced?The reverse migration that you spoke of earlier is even more important in the current context of the COVID-19 pandemic. What are your thoughts on that?

Soon, people in this region started seeing the impact of this work. In Karauli, the people were helpless and unemployed and were forced to engage in unlawful activities. When they saw water come back the village, they started working on water conservation and revived their agricultural work. The forest cover in the region has increased from two percent of the land to 48 percent. The people who earlier left these villages to work as truck-loaders for contractors in Jaipur are now employers, giving work to contractors to transport their farm produce. They are now employing the same people for whom they were doing labour earlier.

How are you taking the message of the importance of water and water conservation to the rest of India? In both urban and rural areas.

This rejuvenation will generate employment for everyone, and pave the way for self-reliance. Self-reliance, or atmanirbharta , will not come from the things that the government talks about.

What kind of support can the government provide? During your work on water conservation, you must have also faced the brunt of local politics. How do you navigate that?

People in cities need to understand that the water in their taps comes from the villages. If we take away this water, we deprive people in the villages of their means of livelihoods and they will be forced to come to the cities. Urban dwellers need be disciplined in their use of water, as well as practice water harvesting and conservation. Our cities urgently need a water literacy movement, and this is something that the government can do. The Indian urban future is moving in a dangerous direction. The reverse migration caused by COVID-19 has reduced the pressure on urban infrastructure to an extent, but we need to continue educating our urban populations. Rural communities, on the other hand, understand the relationship of water with other elements of life better than us. They know that nothing is possible without water, and they have the will to conserve it.

Water Conservation & COVID-19 Pandemic: ‘Waterman’ of India Speaks

Rajendra Singh is a water conservationist and environmentalist from Alwar, Rajasthan. He won the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2001 and the Stockholm Water Prize, also known as the Nobel Prize for water, in 2015. He is the founder of the Tarun Bharat Sangh (TBS), a 45-year-old nonprofit that has been working on making villages self-reliant by constructing johads (percolation ponds) and other water conservation structures to collect rainwater. Rajendra mentors a national collective of water-related organisations, called the Rashtriya Jal Biradari, which has worked on rejuvenating more than 100 rivers in India.

In this interview with IDR, he reflects on what drove him to work on water conservation, what true self-reliance for a village looks like, and how the pandemic is reversing some of the disastrous effects of development.

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Water Conservation & COVID-19 Pandemic: ‘Waterman’ of India Speaks

‘Waterman’ of India Rajendra Singh gives insights on how the pandemic has the potential to bring about a revolution.

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Topics: Water Urban Migration