Engineer gives tuitions to meet expenses, secures CSR funding

Ramveer Tanwar, who has a BTech in mechanical engineering, recently quit his job with a multinational to focus on a cause dear to him — saving ponds. “Water conservation is a more significant career for me than sitting in an AC office,” says Greater Noida’s resident water crusader, who has been instrumental in reviving 10 village ponds in the last five years.Greater Noida, part of Gautam Buddh Nagar district, is home to hundreds of smaller ponds have been neglected — until now.A farmer’s son, Tanwar grew up in Greater Noida’s water bodies. The bigger ones, like the 60-acre Surajpur wetland , are protected by forest conservation rules, but Dadha village, an area that has witnessed water shortages time and again. He noticed how small water bodies, around which community life traditionally revolves in the rural hinterland of Uttar Pradesh , were often treated as garbage dumps. “I grew up seeing this mistreatment of water bodies, even when we were facing droughts,” he says.Then a 21-year-old college student, Tanwar organised a jal chaupal (meeting place) of villagers to discuss the need for cleaning up the ponds.Teams of volunteers were set up to create “a sense of ownership over the project”. Tanwar said, “Soon, jal chaupal became a platform for us to go from village to village and speak about the need to stop throwing garbage into our ponds.”The first pond cleanup the volunteers undertook back in 2014 was in a village called Dabra. “It was full of sludge, hyacinth and garbage. It took us months to just clear the surface. Then, we treated the water, created a filter system and a sort of canal to help farmers use the water for farming,” says Tanwar, who spent his weekends on this work. To ensure its upkeep, they encouraged fishery in the now-pristine pond.To get more manpower, he turned to social media. “Our Facebook page, ‘Boond Boond Pani’, now has over one lakh members. Each time we wanted volunteers, we would make an announcement on the page. Almost a hundred volunteers would reach the conservation location, often in far-flung villages, every time,” he says.Rohit Adhana of Kasana village has been involved with Tanwar’s conservation efforts for a few years now. “It is important that villagers come forward and help save their water sources. We are showing them it is possible,” he says.Tanwar, who has quit his job and does tuitions in the evening to meet his expenses, isn’t on his own anymore. His work got some attention last year after he created the hashtag #SelfieWithPond encouraging villagers to send photos with water bodies, and sponsorship opportunities have been coming up. “After a lot of effort, we got our first CSR funding of Rs 2.5 lakh in 2018,” he says. He used the money to complete many of his ongoing pond projects. Restoring a small pond takes six to seven months and anywhere between Rs 1 lakh and Rs 25 lakh, depending on its condition, This year, he received Rs 7 lakh funding from a company to restore a pond in Ghangola village. The pond has been desilted, and will be fully restored and beautified in a few months.Pawan Khatana, a resident of Bharana village where a pond was revived, says the spirit of water conservation is spreading. “After hearing about what Ramveer has done at our village pond, a lot of other villages have shown interest. Some people even want to do the cleanup themselves now.”Read this story in Bengali