Rajendra Singh

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
(Redirected from
Rajendra Singh (environmentalist)
)
This article is about the Magsaysay Award winner. For other people, see Rajendra Singh (disambiguation).

Rajendra Singh Rana
Allahabad University
Occupationwater conservationist
OrganizationTarun Bharat Sangh
Known forWater-based conservation
Websitetarunbharatsangh.in

Rajendra Singh (born 6 August 1959) is an Indian

semi-arid area as it lies close to 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 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.[1][2][3]
He is one of the members of the National Ganga River Basin Authority (NGRBA) which was set up in 2009, by the Government of India as an empowered planning, financing, monitoring and coordinating authority for the Ganges (Ganga), in exercise of the powers conferred under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986.[4] In the UK he is a founder member of an NGO called the Flow Partnership which aims to counter the negative effects of soil erosion and flooding.

Early life

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 did his early schooling.[5]

An important event in his life came in 1974, when he was still in high school, Ramesh Sharma, a member of

Magsaysay Award
, 1965), though after Jaiprakash fell ill, the internal power politics disillusioned him. Dr. Singh is a BAMS doctor by education.

Career

After completing his studies, he joined government service in 1980, and started his career as a National Service Volunteer for education in Jaipur, from where he was appointed to oversee adult education schools in Dausa district in Rajasthan.[5] 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 General Secretary of the organisation, he questioned the organisation, which had been dabbling with various issues, for its inadequacy in having a substantial impact. Finally in 1984 the entire board resigned leaving the 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 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 2 October 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 colleagues went out about promoting education in the villages.[5]

Teri University
, New Delhi about his projects at Alwar, Rajasthan.

Alwar district, which once had a

bore wells, which simply sucked the groundwater up. But consistent use meant that these bored wells had to be dug deeper and deeper within 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 Meena, who argued "water was a bigger issue to address in rural Rajasthan than education".[3] He chided him to 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 traditional 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 desilting 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 pitched in and in the next three years, it made it 15 feet deep.[5][1]

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

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 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.[1]

By 2001, TBS had spread over an area of 6,500 km2, also including 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 Leadership in the same year.[1] 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 km2 near Bhanota-Kolyala village at the head of Arvari. He has also been organizing Pani Pachayat or Water Parliament in distant villages in Rajasthan to make people aware of the traditional water conservation wisdom,[7] the urgency of groundwater recharge for maintaining underground 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 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.[9]

In 2009, he led a pada

Mithi river.[10] On Jan 2014, he did a parikrama along the banks of Godavari river, from Trimbakeshwar to Paithan to urge people to make the river pollution free. Recently he gave lecture on water and its conservation and values of water at Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, Mumbai.[11]

The struggle for the life and devoted water conservation efforts of Rajendra Singh is being produced by the film producer and director Ravindra Chauhan under the name of the documentary Jal Purush Ki Kahani.His active participation at BIPARD Gaya for 2nd CFC's on 05th of April 2024.

Awards and honours

References

  1. ^ a b c d e "The water man of Rajasthan". Frontline, Volume 18 - Issue 17. 18–31 August 2001.
  2. ^
    The Tribune
    . 18 November 2006.
  3. ^ a b c "50 people who could save the planet". The Guardian. 5 January 2008.
  4. Ministry of Environment
    .
  5. ^
    Magsaysay Award
    website. 2001.
  6. ^ a b "Charles lauds the 'water warriors'". The Hindu. 3 November 2003. Archived from the original on 17 November 2003.
  7. ^ "Unquiet flows the water in this village". The Hindu. 15 April 2005. Archived from the original on 20 April 2005.
  8. Jamnalal Bajaj Foundation
    .
  9. ^ "'Waterman' becomes Ganga's saviour". The Times of India. 5 September 2010. Archived from the original on 1 July 2012.
  10. Indian Express. 12 January 2009. Archived from the original
    on 6 September 2012.
  11. ^ "Godavari Parikrama". 14 January 2014.
  12. ^ "Singh, Rajendra". The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation. Retrieved 26 February 2018.
  13. ^ "Shri Rajendra Singh". Jamnalal Bajaj Foundation. Retrieved 26 February 2018.
  14. ^ "Rajendra Singh - The water man of India wins 2015 Stockholm Water Prize". SIWI. Stockholm International Water Institute. Retrieved 26 February 2018.

External links

Interviews
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rajendra_Singh&oldid=1217790515"