Rajendra Singh is an Indian water conservationist and environmentalist from Alwar district, Rajasthan. Also known as “waterman of India”, he won the Magsaysay Award in 2001 and Stockholm Water Prize in 2015. With a dream of becoming a successful Ayurveda medical practitioner, Dr. Rajendra Singh started his practice in Jaipur in 1980. However, when he noticed that people from rural Rajasthan were migrating to cities due to the lack of proper facilities in villages, he decided to provide his medical service to people living in rural areas. With an aim to serve the underprivileged, in 1985, he left Jaipur and settled in a small village of Bhikampura in Alwar district of Rajasthan. On one fine day during his practice in Alwar, Dr. Singh, had an epiphany which changed the course of his life from being a doctor of human bodies to becoming a doctor of water bodies which also lead him on to the path of gaining the title of ‘the Waterman of India’. For his passion and community-based efforts towards conserving water, the 60-year-old water crusader won the Ramon Magsaysay Award for community leadership in 2001 and Stockholm Water Prize in 2015.
He runs an NGO called ‘Tarun Bharat Sangh’ (TBS), which was founded in 1975. The NGO based in village hori-Bhikampura in Thanagazi tehsil, near Sariska Tiger Reserve, has been instrumental in fighting the slow bureaucracy, mining lobby and has helped villagers take charge of water management in their 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.
