Why hearing ‘Waterman’ Rajendra Singh matters in ecological crisis

Rajendra Singh’s message urges ecological literacy, collective action, and reconnecting people with nature to safeguard future

“There are challenges, and the resolutions to these challenges can now come neither from the courts of India nor from the government of India. They don’t have solutions to these challenges because their priority is economic infrastructure. And when this happens, ecology doesn’t remain a part of it. There’s a disconnect of ecology with life.

The disconnection that’s there of this government with ecology has resulted in we, the people, becoming helpless, worthless, and ill. If we want to set this right, then once again, the Constitution of India is the seed of hope, a ray of hope. With that, we will have to tell officers to fulfil their commitment to the Constitution, but they will not do it because we tell them to. So, what’s the way out? We will have to raise a movement, do ecological-environmental-climate literacy. People will have to come out.”

These words from Dr Rajendra Singh, in chaste Hindi with an earthy cadence, reverberated around the hall last Saturday evening. Singh, often called the ‘Waterman of India’, but who could be the Mountainman of India or Dacoit Reformer of India too, was being his usual self, drawing from his 50-plus years of experience of working in the arid regions of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and elsewhere to bring rivers back to life, protect the Aravallis, and more.

He is nothing if not compelling and gentle at the same time in both his arguments and delivery; his passion to do and to share remains unalloyed by age, and his willingness to travel and take on new challenges remains undimmed despite the challenges that exist, including ecologically insensitive governments and courts.

Singh’s life story is riveting, of course. Having been trained as an Ayurvedic doctor, he worked in a government job for the first four years of his remarkable career until an old man, Mangu kaka, he recalls, told him that his dawai and padhai (medicine and education) were of no use to the earth in the villages of Alwar when the Arvari river was running dry for years. That set off Singh on a journey to understand and revive rivers in the ‘dry’ state of Rajasthan.

The Arvari, which originates from the Aravalli hill range and meanders for less than 100 kilometres, was brought back to life with the involvement of communities after running dry for more than five decades. Singh has not stopped since.

His work over the decades has led to, by his reckoning, the revival of about 23 small and large rivers, including in the ‘badlands’ of Chambal known for harbouring dacoits, and the community-led river revival work has brought about cascading positive impact on at least 17,000–18,000 villages across central India. Singh’s petition to the Supreme Court against mining in the Sariska Tiger Reserve, and the May 1992 judgment, was a landmark one that led to the shutting down of mines there.

This network of communities across the region, flowing from a symbiotic relationship with their land and water into a visible improvement in their lives, laid the groundwork or framework of a people’s movement. Indeed, the reconnection of people with nature enabled the movement and was strengthened over the years as they fought small local battles across the Aravallis.

This network expressed itself in hundreds of people coming out for the Aravallis after the disastrous judgment of the SC in November 2025, which defined that only landforms 100 metres above ground level would be termed “hills” and opened the remaining 90 percent to mining. A month later, the SC held its own judgment in abeyance. Through the decades, Singh’s work through Tarun Bharat Sangh has relied on the power and wisdom of women to energise their home and hearth—and the rivers that feed them all.

The importance of this connection, or reconnection, of people with nature could not be stressed enough in Mumbai, which has seen different groups of people—committed and passionate—protesting and campaigning for various ecological causes: from protecting the ecological integrity of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, pushing back construction in Aarey, stopping the cutting of two-thirds of the 60,000 mangroves for the Versova-Bhayander coastal road, shielding hundreds of trees from being slashed for one project or another, maintaining the green of the Mahalaxmi Racecourse, questioning the proposed construction over wetlands like the 256 acres of salt pans, proposing a “coastal forest” in south Mumbai, and so on.

These battles, each significant in their own respect, remain scattered and un-collectivised, so to say, isolated in silos, even as the state government and the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation have launched an assault on different areas of Mumbai’s natural spaces all at once. Activists have wondered why there cannot be a stronger people’s movement across the city, why the different ecological causes cannot be knit into a wider campaign, and why so few people—non-activists—seem to be interested in ensuring the sanctity of these natural areas.

The answers lie in Singh’s words and work: governments and courts cannot be relied upon; people have to come out loud and strong. But for that to happen, there has to be connection—or reconnection—that people feel with the environment around them, know their trees and leaves, see the mind-boggling smorgasbord of species across the city, including in its coastal corners, and understand that life is sustained not merely by economic or financial prowess but equally by natural abundance.

An emphasis on “economic infrastructure” takes away from ecology, to recall Singh’s words. And some ecological literacy, as he calls it, is the need of the hour. There could not have been a more uplifting message for the many activists who have committed themselves to Mumbai’s ecological integrity but often find themselves on lonely paths.

SMRUTI KOPPIKAR