Bengaluru's water crisis had hit international headlines 3 years back, when its biggest lake did the seemingly impossible, it started floathing. For a city that was once hailed as the land of thousand of lakes, this was a wake up call like no other. Alarmingly, about 40 percent of the city's waste ends up in the Belandur lake. This not only creates an anaerobic environmentin the water below where methane gets formed, but the foam above becomes a perfect catalyst for a fire to break out. Over the last 4 decades Bengaluru has lost four-fifths of its water bodies, driving several resident welfare associations in the city to lead lake revival initiatives in their neighbourhood.
"It was not actually a choice, because from my balconey I could see thi lake and it didn't at all look like a lake , it was a dying lake and I felt that, if I allow the lake to die before my eyes, then I am partly responcible for it's demise" said by Mrs. Usha Raj Gopalan, a neighbourhood lake activist. It took her about 10 years to revive the dying lake in the South of Bengaluru. With the help of neighbours and the large community, she urge the Civic administration to revive the lake. they agreed while clarifying that its mentainance however, would be in the hand of citizens. In 2010, she pulled in money to form a lake improvement trust with like minded citizens and carried out an innovation based and low cost technology and simple science.
Bengaluru, sitting at hte heart of the Indian peninsula at 3000 feet above sea level has had lakes since the 8th century. They were built when te city was founded because it lacked a perennial river and recieved very low rainfall. Lakes infact remained the primary source of water for early Bengaluians. According to Mrs. Harini Nagendra, an ecology researcher,"The last lake that was built in Banglore was Sankey Tank which was built in 1890s and at that point, they essentially said that they are run out of space, there is no more space in Banglore to create another lake. So, what they eventually landed up doing was to bring pipe water for the whole city. Now, the lakes were no longer needed for water, so the lakes became discarded. Along side this decline in the ecologial and the biological importance lo lakes, the 90s also witnessed Bengaluru's transformational journey into the 'Silicon valley' of the global south. Thankfully! citizen groups like Usha's are doing everything they can do today to revive the former glory of it's citizen's beautiful lakes.