Anil Kumar Agarwal, the founder of the Centre for Science and Environment, spearheaded the Jal Swaraj campaign. His thoughts, ideas and opinions remain the driving force behind the movement. Agarwal conceptualised and edited Dying Wisdom, that explore the tremendous potential of India's traditional water harvesting systems; and Making Water Everybody's Business, that documents technologies that are being practiced even today by communities in various parts of the country. These two widely-read publications have gone a long way in putting the issue of community-based water management. in the national agenda.
Agarwal, who passed away on January 2, 2002, graduated as an engineer from one of India's leading engineering colleges in 1970, but gave up a promising technical career to become a science journalist in order to explore the country's scientific and technological needs. He joined Delhi's leading daily, Hindustan Times, as a science correspondent in 1973 and soon discovered India's most evocative environmental movement known as the Chipko Movement in 1974. The reportage of this movement not only led to a nationwide interest in environmental conservation but also brought home to Agarwal the importance that the environment and its natural resource base hold for the local village economy and for meeting the daily needs of village people in terms of water, firewood, fodder, manure, building materials and medicinal herbs. This was still a time when the leadership of the developing world still believed that economic development must take precedence over environmental conservation. But this understanding of the relationship between the poor and their environment soon turned Agarwal into a lifelong environmentalist and a reknowned environmental analyst and writer.
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