It began with a newspaper article claiming 21 cities, including Bengaluru, would run dry by 2025. “That really stuck with me,” says Anand Malligavad, who was recently named “Earth Champion” by Sony BBC Earth. It got him thinking about why a city which once had surplus water was at risk of running out of it, and he began reading and researching extensively about it.
“Bengaluru does not have big rivers,” he says, pointing out that even the smaller ones, Vrishabhavathi, Kumudvathi, Arkavathy and Dakshina Pinakini, which generate from Nandi Hills, are now so polluted that they resembled septic tanks.
Anand Malligavad | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRAGEMENT
He also began investigating the city’s lakes, once Bengaluru’s primary source of potable water, many built by the Chola kings some 800-900 years ago. “They had built it systematically as interconnected, cascading lakes,” he says, claiming that the city once boasted of nearly 1850 lakes. Around 465 remain, of which only a tiny percentage still contain clean water, the abysmal situation a function of the city’s unprecedented growth over the last few decades. “Bangalore was not a metro city,” says Anand. It was a small city surrounded by villages, each containing a lake or two built by our ancestors, which merged over the years. “Lakes were once the lungs of this area,” he says.
In 2017, after spending a year or so on research, he decided to take matters into his own hands, a decision galvanised by an incident at the mostly dry Kyalasanahalli lake he drove past every day on his way to his office; he worked in Sansera Engineering, an automotive components manufacturer, back then. Wanting to look closer, he began walking around the 36-acre lake, filled with debris, industrial effluents and sewage. Then, disaster struck. “I slipped and fell,” he says, with a laugh, recalling how the stench of the lake clung onto him for days after. “That is when I thought of creating a model of lake rejuvenating, working in parallel with the government to resuscitate the water body.”
File photo of Haralur Lake where hundreds of dead fish were found floating. | Photo Credit: HANDOUT E MAIL
Growing up
Anand Malligavad grew up in the village of Karamudi, a small hamlet located in Karnataka’s Koppal District, an hour or so away from Hampi, the erstwhile capital of the Vijayanagara kingdom. He says it was a dry, arid landscape, constantly prone to drought, comparing it to the state of Rajasthan in which the Thar Desert is located. The village lake, therefore, became the fulcrum around which life revolved, says Anand, who considers himself lucky because his school was near this lake. “I used to spend a lot of time there,” he says, recalling how he frolicked in the water, making models of check dams and lagoons with mud. “That was my life. I learnt about ecosystems from that lake, something that helps me today,” he believes.
In 1996, he moved to Bengaluru to study mechanical engineering, getting a job at Sansera Engineering, where he would spend the next 15-odd years of his life before quitting in 2019 to pursue lake conservation full-time. He has fond memories of the city back then. “Bengaluru used to receive the best rains...had a great climate…rich soil…lots of greenery,” he says, pointing out that this dense vegetation ensured moderate microclimates, plenty of rain and the fragrance of flowers constantly lingering in the air. He offers an adage, which was true about the city before it became the messy metro it is today. “Whenever a Bengalurean sweats, the city receives rain.”
File photo of Bellandur lake in poor condition before monsoon season. | Photo Credit: MURALI KUMAR K
Changing Bengaluru
Not anymore, however. The former garden city, now constantly clogged with traffic, smog and construction dust, filled with high-rises, malls and IT Parks, is among the most water-starved cities in the world, with a crisis looming large almost every other summer, including this one. It is also vulnerable to frequent flooding, a function of poor infrastructure, concretisation and destruction of its lakes and green spaces, among other things. “Economy and infrastructure here are going up like a high-rise building. But the environment is going down like water,” he quips.
Water, like air, should be a free commodity, he believes. And yet, most people in this city end up spending a considerable chunk of their earnings trying to source clean water. Rejuvenating lakes the right way could play a huge part in solving the city’s water shortage problem. According to him, when authorities rejuvenate the lakes, they don’t always do so in an eco-sensitive and self-sustaining way. “They focus on beautification, relying a lot on architects,” he says, pointing out that their water quality continued to be questionable even after crores of rupees were spent on these lakes. Beautification, he firmly believes, is not the answer. Instead, water bodies should be rejuvenated in a way that is as natural as possible, not just focusing on the water but the entire ecosystem, including soil, water, flora and fauna. “This way, it will maintain itself and not need human interference,” he says.
File photo of Varthur lake. | Photo Credit: SUDHAKARA JAIN
Dipping into the past
The first lake Anand decided to rejuvenate was the lake he had fallen into – Kyalasanahalli. He took a couple of months to design a plan to rejuvenate it, looking to the past for answers. “I used the concept of the Chola and technique of the current era,” he says, pointing out that the ancient kingdom has used a “ridge to river” methodology, creating a complex network of channels and bunds that both conserved water and prevented flooding. “It was the cheapest technology available,” he says. Unlike the regular lake beautification process, which often runs into crores, he believed he needed only around 95 lakhs to revive the 36-acre-large lake. “I was looking for funds. Where to go? Whom to get it from?” remembers Anand, who turned to his own company’s CSR wing to obtain these, taking almost three months to convince leadership of the project’s viability.
On April 20, 2017, he began working on the lake, dredging the filthy mud, creating islands for birds and planting many saplings with the help of volunteers over the next 45 days before finally stepping back to wait for the monsoons. Within six months, the lake, which had been parched for decades, was filled with water, so much that Anand could even boat across it. “You know, I saw that lake yesterday, and it still has 18 ft of water in it…enough to recharge the borewells,” he adds.
The work so far
Since then, Anand says he has rejuvenated over 35 lakes in the city, almost all paid for using CSR funds, and over 80 across the country, including U.P., Orissa, Telangana and Maharashtra. He even quit his day job in 2019 to focus completely on lakes, conducting training programmes on lake rejuvenation all across the country and advising many states in India about better water management. Currently, he says, he is working on rejuvenating Billapura near Sarjapur Lake, Shira Lake in Tumkur and Kolar’s Kolaramma Lake. “We are planning for another 5 lakes; it is yet to start,” he says.
While things have come a long way since 2015, there are still many challenges in lake conservation. “People are more aware and know we need to do something, but they don’t always come forward (to help), “ he says. Encroachment is also a big issue, with the government often being lethargic about clearing it. “People fight with me,” says Anand, who actively engages with local leaders and the community to sort out encroachment issues.
Yet, he remains hopeful that things will improve, especially considering that the younger generation appears to be more concerned about the planet.
