#johad

The world's first river parliament...

There is a small river (45kms long) in Alwar district of Rajasthan called Arvari, which by 1985, had completely dried out and was deemed dead.

By 1996, due to the leadership of one man and the concerted efforts of his organization and the local villagers, River Arvari became a perennial river once again. A perennial river is one that has water flowing throughout the year, as against a seasonal river, that has water flowing in rainy season only. So, basically a few human beings brought a dead river back to life!

Therein lies a tale. But that's not all.

River bodies are government properties. That is, they come under the State government jurisdiction. So when the river, with its teeming fish, became vibrant once again, the government started issuing fishing licenses to outside contractors. This put the river back at risk. So the villagers along the river basin came together and created such a hue and cry that the government had to rescind its allotted contracts.

What's more, the villagers formed what happens to be the world's first river parliament - the Arvari River Parliament - comprising 162 members from 72 villages. Today, this river parliament, and not the state government, owns the river.

So, how did a dead river come back to life? Who is this one man under whose leadership this became possible? And what exactly does a river parliament do?

Therein lies a most interesting tale!

Meet Rajendra Singh and his organization Tarun Bharat Sangh, the architects of this miracle.

Rajendra Singh was born in a village called Daula, near Meerut, in Uttar Pradesh. He did his Bachelors degree in Ayurvedic Medicine (BAMS) and took up a government job in Jaipur. This was 1980 and he was 21 years old. His job was to oversee adult education schools in Dausa district in Rajasthan.

Parallelly, he joined Tarun Bharat Sangha (Young India Association) or TBS, an organization formed by officer and students of Jaipur University. In three years, he became General Secretary of TBS.

In 1984, frustrated with the apathy of his superiors towards developmental issues and his own inability to have a larger impact, he left his job, sold all his worldly possessions for Rs 23,000 and boarded a bus going into interior of Rajasthan, with a bus ticket for the last stop!!! Four of his equally crazy colleagues joined him. The last stop turned out to be Kishori village in Alwar district, and the date was 2nd October 1985.

He started an Ayurvedic medicine practice in nearby village Gopalpura, while his colleagues went out about promoting education in the villages. That's when he met Mangu Lal Meena, an elderly villager, who told him that water was a bigger priority than education for them.

Alwar district had a grain market at one time, but was now largely dry and barren, as years of deforestation, mining and alternate cycles of drought and floods, had led to a dwindling water table. Also, use of 'modern' borewells pushed underground water table further down each year.

Mangu Lal Meena encouraged Rajendra Singh to work on a Johad, an earthen check dam. Johads have traditionally been used to store rainwater and recharge groundwater.

Eventually, with the help of local youth, 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.

Seeing this early success, Rajendra Singh formed the Tarun Ashram, the headquarters of TBS, and started first padayatras (walkathons) through all the villages of the area, educating villagers to rebuild old check dams.

Their biggest success was yet to come. In 1986, people of Bhanota-Kolyala village, through shramdaan (voluntary labour) and with the help of TBS volunteers, constructed a johad at the source of a dried Arvari River. Following this, some 375 johads were constructed in villages that lay in its catchment area, with largest being a 244-meter-long and 7-meter-high concrete dam in the Aravalli hills.

But still water levels didn't go up as expected. TBS found out that water got evaporated from mining pits left unfilled by the miners after their operations in the area. They filed a public interest petition in the Supreme Court, which in 1991, banned mining in the Aravallis. Soon, the Ministry of Environment and Forests closed 470 mines operating in that area. The efforts paid off. By 1995, Aravri became a perennial river!

This is the crux of the amazing story of how a group of people brought a river, dead for the past 60 years, back to life in just 10 years, by using technology already available with us for the past 2000 years!

When there was plenty of water in River Arvari, there was natural growth of fish. The government wanted to get hold of the fish and brought in a contractor. The people resisted. It is not that the local people wanted control over the fish. Far from it! They are mostly vegetarians and did not eat fish, but they realized that today it was fish, tomorrow it would be water.

So, they formed the Arvari Sansad (Arvari River Parliament). The Sansad represents 72 villages, each of which sends two representatives, who are nominated by their respective Gram Sabhas.

The primary objective of the Sansad was to safeguard the integrated water management efforts of the communities along the river basin. The Sansad had no legal authority. But the moral authority it had over its members was enough.

The Sansad convened its general meeting twice a year. Its agreed charter is as follows.

The river was awarded the `International River Prize' in 2000, and the-then President, K R Narayanan visited the area to present the "Down to Earth - Joseph. C. John Award" to the villagers.

Subsequently, rivers like Ruparel, Sarsa, Bhagani and Jahajwali were also revived after remaining dry for decades. Abandoned villages in the areas got populated and farming activities resumed once again in hundreds of drought-prone villages in districts of Jaipur, Dausa, Sawai Madhopur, Bharatpur and Karauli. In all, TBS touched 850 villages in 11 districts in Rajasthan. By 2001, TBS had spread over to Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh. Rajendra Singh is today affectionately called The Waterman of India.

While all this magic was happening on the ground, the world sat up and took notice. And applauded. Wikipedia lists down the following awards and accolades that the Waterman of India received.

Notice how lightly the Nobel Prize of Asia - Magsaysay Award, and the Nobel Prize of Water - The Stockholm Water Prize, sit on him. In its citation, The Stockholm Water Prize Committee says that “Today’s water problems cannot be solved by science or technology alone. They are instead human problems of governance, policy, leadership, and social resilience." Rajendra Singh and Tarun Bharat Sangh are true examples of how to solve such problems.

Last year, I played a small part in the Cauvery Calling movement, championed by Sadguru Jaggi Vasudev and his Isha volunteers, by contributing to planting 200 trees. Though small, I take pride in my gesture because I know that history is proof - civilizations are born around river systems, and civilizations are wiped out when river systems die.