Amla Ruia

Though born with a silver spoon in her mouth, Amla Ruia's heart bled seeing people sufferings due to acute water shortage. Flipping television channels, Ruia froze at the images from a village in Rajasthan that was reeling under severe drought in 1998. This moved her soul, and she then founded the Aakar Charitable Trust (ACT). ACT partners with villages to build check dams that provide water security. Her first check dam project was in Mandawar village in Rajasthan, a huge success. Farmers managed to earn up to 120 million rupees in a year via the two check dams built by Aakar Charitable Trust. The check dams allow the aquifers to be replenished during the monsoon, so bore wells and hand-pumps are recharged. Villagers have grown up to three crops per year and keep livestock. Cultivable land in the villages has increased, and farm workers who migrated to cities in search of jobs have returned home. Ruia estimates that the resulting increased income gives a 750% return on the investment in the check dams. Girls can attend school as they no longer need to help their mothers carry water from long distances, and students can undertake tertiary education. Women have been spared the struggle of finding water, and health and hygiene levels in the villages have improved. Her check dams have thus brought back prosperity to the villages, making her known as Paani Mata. For Ruia, this has given great satisfaction and the motivation to build more dams. By the end of 2017, Aakar Charitable Trust had made more than 200 check dams in more than 115 villages in Rajasthan, with flow-on effects to almost 200 other towns. From 2000 to 2005, they also built 200 Drinking Water Kunds (conventional type). A total of one crore liters of purely natural drinking water from the rains is collected year after year in the remotest areas where no municipal water is available. To encourage mass-scale Water harvesting by the villagers, the trust organized 'The Aakar Jal Puraskar' of Rs. 1,00,000 was given annually to the village that did the best water harvesting in Maharashtra from 2003 to 2006. In 2011, Ruia was awarded a Lakshmipat Singhania - IIM Lucknow National Leadership Award in Community Service and Social Upliftment. In 2016, she was nominated for the Women of Worth Social Award category. In 2018, she received the India Eye International Human Rights Observer Achievement Award 2018. Amla Ruia is one of India's most active water conservationists and has done pioneering work in this field.