Dehradun: Where there is a will, there is a way! Where there is a vision, there is a result! Good governance is all about improving the people’s ease of life, which Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer Vaibhav Singh has done in Rudraprayag Forest Division in Uttarakhand, in a remarkable way. Adopting a well-crafted strategy coupled with the urge to do something for the people in distress and keep the hopes afloat for posterity, his water conservation mission has set the ball rolling to conserve and preserve what is central to life on the planet!

“Happy to share that the team of #Rudraprayag Forest Division has been able to conserve more than 8 million litres of rain water during the past few days! The efforts put in by the field staff have yielded excellent results,” Vaibhav shares his sense of fulfillment in a post on his Twitter handle. He and his team have undertaken several other projects to restore the quintessential beauty of nature. For example, the beautification of road side natural water sources is being done by Rudraprayag Division. He says that ‘Save #wildlife to save #water’ is our theme! As many as 20 water springs will be taken up under this project!

Why should Vaibhav and his team be patted for what they are doing? According to the World Bank, India has taken significant steps to reduce poverty but the number of people who live in poverty is still highly disproportionate to the number of people who are middle-income, with a combined rate of over 52 per cent of both rural and urban poor.

Regardless of improvements to drinking water, many other water sources are contaminated with both bio and chemical pollutants, and over 21 per cent of the country's diseases are water-related. There is no easy answer for India which must tap into water sources for food and human sustenance, but India's overall water availability is running dry. Water scarcity in India is expected to worsen as the overall population is expected to increase to 1.6 billion by the year 2050.

Some areas of India are fortunate to have a relatively wet climate, even in the most arid regions. However, with no rain catchment programs in place, most of the water is displaced or dried up instead of used. India needs solutions now. Children in 100 million homes in the country lack water. Environmental justice needs to be restored to India so that families can raise their children with dignity, and providing water to communities is one such way to best ensure that chance.