Meet the ‘Water Man’ of India

The 2015 Stockholm Water Prize has been awarded to Rajendra Singh for his consistent attempts to improve the country’s water security PHOTO: SIWI

Twenty years ago, when 28-year-old Rajendra Singh arrived in an arid village in Rajasthan, he came with degrees in Ayurveda and Hindi and a plan to set up clinics. That’s when he was told the greatest need was not medical help but clean drinking water. Groundwater had been sucked dry by farmers, and as water disappeared, crops failed, rivers, forests and wildlife disappeared and people left for the towns. In 2008, The Guardian listed him as one of its “50 people who could save the planet”. In March 2015, he was awarded the Stockholm Water Prize, known as the Nobel Prize for water.