An ancient technology is helping India’s “water man” save thousands of parched villages

In 1985, a 28-year-old man from Uttar Pradesh quit his government job, left his family and arrived in the dead of the night at a small village in Rajasthan’s Alwar district.

Rajendra Singh, along with four companions from the Tarun Bharat Sangh, a non-profit that traces its origins to the University of Rajasthan, wanted to work in the hinterland. The initial idea was to establish clinics.

“Maybe it was some social chromosomes that fired my imagination to do something useful,” Singh said in an interview. “I was a government servant in Jaipur, fed up with just sending statistics to officials.”

It look him a few months before finding his life’s mission—and it took an ancient innovation, a fast disappearing traditional technology, to help him transform the lives of thousands of villagers in one of India’s most arid regions.