[Monday Motivation] Meet the man who left a lucrative job to rejuvenate lakes in Bengaluru

Hailing from a small village in the Koppal district of North Karnataka, Anand Malligavad spent most of his time amidst nature and learning from it as his school was located on the banks of a lake.

He moved to Bengaluru in 1996 before the city was impacted by urbanisation. “That time, the city hadn’t grown much, every home had a well, and we used to get the best quality water. Over a period of about 10-15 years, things changed,” he said.

Due to rapid urbanisation in the past few decades, Bengaluru lost most of these water bodies to infrastructure projects and encroachment. The lakes in the city were encroached for urban development and with concrete jungles mushrooming, the remaining lakes were also in trouble.

In 2015, Anand read an article that Bengaluru was on the way to becoming a zero-water city like Cape Town and would have to deal with huge water scarcity.

“I started studying why the city is going dry, and I realised that out of 1,000 lakes, about 450 were destroyed in the name of urbanisation. Over a period of time, the complete ecosystem was destroyed due to infrastructure-building over these lakes. Earlier, we used to get best quality water at 10-20 ft, which is no longer the case.”

Anand decided that he wanted to do something to change the prevailing conditions. This set him on a path to rejuvenate Bangalore’s lakes, one lake at a time.

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Getting started

The first project that he undertook was the rejuvenation of Kyalasanahalli Lake (36 acres) near Anekal in 2017, the work of which was completed in 45 days.

"I had a budget of Rs 1 crore, which was the CSR fund of Sansera Engineering where I worked then. Keeping this in mind, I did the calculations and found where we could reduce the costs. We used mostly natural materials, clay, and gravel from the lake itself to create bunds and separations," Anand recalls.

With the help of a senior citizen, B Muthuraman (74), he reached out to the nearby community and covered almost 400 houses to spread awareness. Eventually, people began to show up, and joined hands to work long hours to make it possible.

“We began the work on April 20, 2017, with a budget of Rs 1 crore and 17 lakh, provided by Sansera Foundation. We completed the project on June 5. About 5,500 saplings were planted in 1 hour, 45 minutes. The volunteers who came started spreading the word, and more people started reaching out to me.”

Over a period of time, along with his job, he helped rejuvenate three lakes. Then, Anand resigned from his job and started working as a lake conservationist full time.

In the past three years, Anand has rejuvenated many other lakes in Bengaluru , including the Vabasandra Lake (9 acres), Konasandra Lake (16 acres), Gavi Lake (3 acres), Manae Lake (5 acres), Hadosiddapur Lake (35 acres), Nanjapura Lake (18 acres) and Chikka Nagamangala Lake (47 acres).

As of now, he has rejuvenated 12 lakes and work is in full swing on two others. Besides this, he has assisted others to rejuvenate four other lakes.

“A total of 211 acres of land have been rejuvenated. We have planted more than one lakh saplings and over 8,000 borewells have been recharged,” Anand says.

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Reviving the lakes

Anand has done independent work on understanding lake designing and execution.

His process of reviving the lakes starts from making a detailed project report, then getting permission from the municipal corporation, and surveying the lake. The process includes desilting, strengthening the paths, creating walking paths, and opening up all the channels by removing mud, waste etc,.

"All the lakes I have worked on so far were designed based on the topography and local conditions. We have also planted four different types of forests - Miyawaki, traditional forest, grassland, or wetland - depending on the local needs. All the saplings planted are local species. We also replenished the lakes with the original fish species,” he says.

Anand adds that he works with semi-urban lakes and does it in natural ways with whatever source is available. This means that he does not revive water bodies using modern material like steel, concrete structures.

“I rejuvenate lakes ecologically so that they sustain a 60 percent water body and 40 percent native forests, with flora and fauna developing naturally. These lakes support surface drinking water for birds and animals. They also recharge aquifers to get portable water in borewells for drinking and agriculture purposes.”

Anand’s work does not end with the rejuvenation; he says he takes care of the lakes after that as well.

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Marching forward

Till now, most of his projects have been funded through CSR activities; two were completed through crowdfunding.

Anand says getting corporates on board was one of the big challenges. The other challenge? Resistance from encroachers.

“Since the lakes had been neglected for decades and partly dried up, nearly one-third of the area was encroached upon. The sad part is [the encroachers] do not want the lake to be revived. It took a long time to convince them,” Anand recalls.

It wasn’t a smooth ride but he eventually overcame these challenges. He is on a mission to rejuvenate 45 lakes in Bengaluru by 2030.

Today, Anand is in touch with many states and offers technical and scientific support in reviving water bodies and helping sustain the natural habitat in the country. He also speaks to school and college students to inspire them to work for this mission.