Tarun Bharat Sangh
🌐A community-led water conservation organization restoring India's river systems through traditional knowledge and modern watershed management. TBS has revived 14 rivers, built thousands of water harvesting structures, and established a network of water stewards combining technical expertise with cultural revival.
Bioregional Context
Rajasthan is India's largest state by area and one of its most water-scarce regions, characterized by arid and semi-arid landscapes with minimal annual rainfall (200-400mm). The region's water crisis is exacerbated by depleting groundwater tables, desertification, and increasingly unpredictable monsoon patterns due to climate change.
Background
Rajasthan is India's largest state by area and one of its most water-scarce regions: arid and semi-arid country with typically 200–400mm of rain per year. Falling groundwater, desertification, and a more erratic monsoon deepen the crisis. Harvesting traditions that had sustained communities for generations were neglected in recent decades, contributing to farm decline and outmigration.
Historically, the Alwar region was water-rich into the early twentieth century. Communities practiced rainwater harvesting through johads—earthen check dams that hold runoff so it can soak in and recharge aquifers. By the 1980s scarcity was severe; parts of the region were “dark zones” in state irrigation records—groundwater critically low.
Land grew unsuitable for farming or herding, so many working-age men left for cities, leaving women and elders behind. Villages turned to Tarun Bharat Sangh after barren fields and collapsing livelihoods had already done deep harm.
Origins and Network
From 1985, Tarun Bharat Sangh (TBS), a Rajasthan-based NGO, focused on water conservation, beginning in Gopalpura in the Alwar area. The team stayed in the village to understand conditions. An elder described the old johad approach—still sound, but weakened by years without resources, backing, or confidence.
The first johad, chabootre wala johad, was built in 1985 to show the method still worked. When it held water and some farmers could grow bajra again, the team added mewalon ka baandh in 1986. Both structures helped refill wells, recharge groundwater, and restore fields.
Activities
Watershed Restoration and River Revival
TBS works with communities to bring back water abundance, revive river watersheds, and support sustainable development. Work includes harvesting structures across watersheds, efficient use such as drip irrigation, and water literacy for many actors. Before projects start, staff live in a village for six to twelve months to build trust, learn constraints, and co-design responses; engagement often runs ten to fifteen years per village. The core tools are johads, check dams, and percolation tanks, alongside literacy campaigns, drip systems, and sustainable farming. TBS reports 13,800 functioning rainwater harvesting systems and 13 rivers rejuvenated across India. Their work harvests 100 billion liters of rainwater annually and has converted more than 10,000 square kilometers from no-water zones into water-secure landscapes.
Cultural Revival for Ecological Kinship
TBS wove ritual and symbol into daily responsibility for ecosystems. Drawing on Raksha Bandhan, where sisters tie threads on brothers’ wrists, villagers tied threads around trees to pledge protection. After the first johad proved itself, Jal Utsav (Water Festival) in 1987 helped anchor community ownership; participants formed a village gram sabha (council) to share responsibility. From 1987, TBS supported three padyatras (campaign walks) each year, led by Gopalpura residents who chose routes, names, and how to invite other villages. Together, these practices frame restoration as cultural and relational—not only technical.
Community-Led Governance
To counter government contracts for commercial fishing that risked overuse, habitat harm, and displacement, TBS helped communities create the River Arvari Sansad (River Arvari Parliament) in 1998. The body drew gram sabhas from 72 villages along the river. With more than 140 members, the Parliament challenged those contracts through public-interest litigation until the Supreme Court canceled them—asserting community rights to water and land over company concessions. It sets rules for the river, banks, and catchment; for crops, fishing, grazing, borewells, and thirsty crops such as sugarcane—embodying local stewardship of shared resources. The twin villages of Bhaonta–Koylala, leaders in Arvari’s revival, received the first Down to Earth Joseph C. John award for an environmental community from President K.R. Narayanan on 28 March 2000. Similar models are spreading along rivers such as Chambal and Dholpur.
Water Literacy and Education
TBS ran trainings and workshops for farmers, youth, schoolchildren, and local officials—often through village heads—so communities could see how conservation linked to their own well-being and to the land’s productivity.
Water Warriors
TBS trained more than 10,000 Jal Yodhas (“Water Warriors”)—grassroots leaders, including women and youth—with technical and ecological skills to advance restoration locally. Tarun Jal Vidyapeeth offers a two-year course for water warriors and shorter courses for village institutions, NGOs, scientists, and officials. Many warriors organize through self-help groups and youth networks. By 2001–02, TBS had helped form 325 SHGs across 180 villages in Alwar and Mewat; women received training in plant-based medicine and took part in gram sabha decisions.
National and International Advocacy
In 1989, TBS and village partners discussed how mining in the Aravallis—near Sariska—was undermining johads. Dr. Singh concluded blasting had opened fractures in aquifers; communities needed relief. In 1990 TBS petitioned the Supreme Court to close those mines; in 1991 the Court ordered a stop, and in 1992 the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests restricted mining in parts of the range. To press state compliance, TBS and allies staged an 800-km march across four states. Dr. Singh walked from Himmatnagar, Gujarat, toward Delhi from 2 October 1993 for over four months. Advocacy of this kind contributed to closing some 28,000 mines by 1996. By 2001–02, TBS was contesting the 2002 National Water Policy, fearing it would deepen privatized control of water. The Rashtriya Jal Chetna Yatra crossed 320 districts in 30 states over fourteen months. That campaign helped launch Rashtriya Jal Biradari (RJB), a national forum in 2001 that ran roughly a decade—public meetings, riparian problem-solving, outreach to ministers and officials, and litigation where needed. In the 2020s, Jal Biradari linked to global drought-and-flood dialogue; the network claims more than 1,000 members and bodies such as the Indian Himalayan River Basin Council and the Indian Peninsular River Basin Council. With TBS vice chairman Professor G.D. Agarwal (environmentalist, former IIT Kanpur dean), the organization pressed for the Ganga. From 2008 his fasts—including over damming the Bhagirathi headstream—drew national attention. In February 2009, one outcome was national-river status for the Ganga and creation of the National Ganga River Basin Authority (NGBRA).
Vision and Legacy
The programme still prioritizes highly marginalized communities—currently including Scheduled Tribe and Scheduled Caste villages in Rajasthan’s Karauli district—showing how traditional knowledge, community ownership, and long commitment can move landscapes from dry wells toward flowing water and from despair toward hope.
TBS describes five decades of work with Rajasthan communities as helping revive 14 rivers, raise forest cover by 30%, return about 70% of once-barren land to cultivation, and protect five rivers from encroachment—bringing water security to over one million families. With water came more food security and livelihood; agriculture and milk production rose in 100% of project areas and farmer incomes doubled in participating villages, giving young people reason to stay or return.
As Rajendra Singh and Indira Khurana write in “Rejuvenation of Rivers”: “Change is possible. Through love and respect: Love for nature and respect for communities, and then nurturing of both. Through understanding the terrain – the endless recharge possibilities that the fractured rocks offer – and then healing the environment through appropriate water conservation structures and involving the people and their contribution. Lastly, through maintaining transparency.”