Restoring rivers and fighting to save the Aravalli hills is what Dr Rajendra Singh has been doing. But now he is moving to a broader canvas. The Magsaysay awardee and conservationist, also known as the ‘Waterman of India’, has called a convention on 22 May at Jamshedpur to finalize an Indian Mountains Preservation Bill. It will kick off a new campaign to protect and preserve the country’s high altitude assets spread over the Himalayan and other mountain ranges.
The Bill’s focus will be to set up an autonomous Mountain Authority which will monitor the hills and lay down rules for their ecological preservation.
“Today, we have nothing to protect our mountain assets. River paths are being changed in the name of tourism and infrastructure growth,” said Rajendra Singh in an exclusive interview.
The new campaign to protect India’s mountainous regions is but an extension of his long drawn battle to preserve the Aravalli range. The 670-km long rolling hills running through 4 northern states, have been eyed by real estate and mining interests for decades.
The Sariska judgement
Quite recently, the Supreme Court, on 1 January, this year, stayed its own November 2025 judgment on the Aravallis that had adopted a restrictive 100-meter elevation criterion to define a protected ‘hill’. Had this been adopted, it would have stripped protection from over 90% of the low-lying range. The court is now reviewing this definition through a new committee to protect the ecosystem.
The original landmark apex court judgement of 1992, penned by Justices BP Jeevan Reddy and MN Venkatachaliah, originated from PILs filed by Rajendra Singh and others to protect the Sariska Tiger Sanctuary and the Aravalli hills around from illegal mining.
The bench prohibited all mining activities within the Sariska Wildlife Sanctuary and its periphery to preserve forest wealth and wildlife. Justice Venkatachaliah famously noted that while government is above big business, and individual liberty is above government, the environment is above all.
“We have come a long way from the 1992 judgement,” rued the conservationist. Earlier, we drew a workable balance between nature and human needs. Today, insensitive committees are working on a compromise between pressure groups and administrative compulsion. “What will emerge will not be sustainable decisions,” he added.
Talking of his early days, the ‘Waterman’ said he was deeply influenced by the Jaiprakash Narayan movement that kicked off in Bihar in 1974 for ‘Sampooran Kranti’. After graduation though, much to the glee of his parents, he took up a job with the state’s education department.
Rajendra Singh described his early-days disillusionment with the corrupt politicians who rose from the ranks of the J P movement, as well as of the regressive nature of government jobs. Even his ayurvedic barefoot doctor work left him dissatisfied.
“A semi-blind farm worker, Mangu kaka, told me I should be a doctor to ‘Mother Earth’; and greater good will be achieved if I can help stop the millions of poor from eviction from their villages,” he recalled.
Old Mangu triggered his resignation from his government positions, and he formed the Tarun Bharat Sangh in 1984, returning to the village Hori-Bhikampura, on the outskirts of the Sariska Tiger Reserve. This became his headquarters not only to fight the mining lobbies, but to develop water management and preservation in these semi-arid regions abutting the Thar desert.
Reviving Rivers
Traditional conservation techniques such as the johad, or percolation pond, were revived to drain rainwater to the subterranean levels. This prevented evaporation and raised the water table. Hundreds of check dams too were built to to harvest and store rain water.
Mining is the natural enemy of water conservation, points out Rajendra Singh. Through layers of stone and slate, water makes its way to the mines, creating an impediment to the excavation process. Water is then pumped or drained away, and lost forever.
Stopping mining operations, building johads or pokhars (percolation ponds) and check dams at nearly 9,000 sites, he has greened nearly 1,000 villages, and revived as many as 32 rivers in the northern states. Those in Rajasthan include the Arvari, Ruparel, Sarsa, Bhagani and Jahajwali.
A spin-off from the water conservation movement is the end of dacoity in the region. Rajendra Singh said he started work in 1998 when village youth took to dacoity because even large land holding bore little harvest. However, when water brought these lands back to life, the women folk convinced many of the outlaws to return home as farmers.
One such success story was that of dacoit Umrao Singh of Amalpur village. From 2015, the village began to prosper, and Umrao decided to surrender to the police. After a year the Tarun Bharat Sangh gifted him a pair of goats. The initial investment expanded to a herd of sheep and 5 buffaloes. Today Umrao Singh is a proud herdsman with an income of about Rs 5 lakh a year.
Working over 2 decades, Rajendra Singh has supervised the surrender of 6.323 outlaws; but he says now he is working to end a different kind of dacoity. A large number of villages in the Mewat region have taken to cyber crime. “These youth are uneducated, but they have been trained to hack phones and cream off bank balances.” Bringing them back to farming will be a more difficult challenge, he says.