Dear Donors,

Thank you for supporting the Lake Revivers Collective. With your help, Anand could resume work at the lake while taking proper safety measures and is working towards bringing the lake to completion soon.

Dear Supporters,

Thank you for your constant support towards the Lake Revivers Collective. On 16 March 2020, we announced that we are moving to the next lake revival project, with Hadosiddapura lake located in Sarjapur, Bengaluru.

Thank you for your constant support towards the Lake Revivers Collective. On 16 March 2020, we announced that we are moving to the next lake revival project, with Hadosiddapura lake located in Sarjapur, Bengaluru.

With phase one of desilting already complete, Anand has begun phase 2 of cleaning and designing with the help of residents and school students of Bhoomi Network, an institution that has been trying to revive the lake for the past few years. In phase 2 of revival, Anand has worked on the following steps at the lake:

1. A natural sewage treatment system has been built to treat sewage water entering through lake inlets.
2. Concrete pipes have been installed to support rainwater flow from catchment areas.
3. Natural wetlands have been created at various places.
4. Aquatic plants have been planted.

Here are some recent pictures:
We will keep you updated on the next steps.

Thank you. 

Dear Members of the Lake Revivers Collective,

Thank you for joining us in our journey toward saving India, one lake at a time. As many of you know, The Lake Revivers Collective is an initiative as part which The Better India and its readers are helping Anand Malligavad reach his goal of saving Bengaluru and India, one lake at a time.

On World Water Day 2019, we started with Gavi Kere, a 3-acre lake in Anekal Taluk of Bengaluru South. With your generous and timely support, we were able to raise Rs. 17 lakh to transform the lake. From designing, cleaning, desilting, stone pitching to overall construction, it took almost 45 days for Anand and his team to complete the work at the lake. And then began the wait for the rains. With the delayed monsoon in 2019, it took time for the lake to fill up, and it now stands with about 70% water.

With World Water Day 2020 around the corner, we are happy to announce that the Lake Revivers Collective is moving to its next project - the Hadosiddapura lake located in Sarjapur, Bengaluru.

Unlike his previous projects like the Kyalasanahalli Lake and Gavi Kere Lake, where Anand concentrated on reviving a series of lakes belonging to the same zone and stream, to ensure each one supports the other, this lake is the complete opposite.

“Hadosiddapura lake is an independent catchment lake, which means it does not flow into any other lake directly. But, that does not mean, reviving this is an easy task. When I first came to analyse the condition of this lake, I realised that it was completely dried but filled with sewage water that comes through several sewage inlets connected to this lake,” shares Anand.

He took up the project of reviving Hadosiddapura lake in January 2020 and hopes to complete it prior to the monsoons, by the end of May.

Although the lake is spread across an area of 36-acres, Anand has managed to begin the work on 29 acres only as the rest of the area has been encroached upon. “A major problem with such lakes is the high incident of encroachment. We are trying to find our way out of this problem and are taking every possible measure to get the land back so that it can be transformed into a forest lining around the lake. It will take time, so at first, we are pouring all our efforts to revive the spot we already have,” he shares.

With the phase one of desilting already done, Anand has begun the phase 2 of cleaning and designing with the help of residents and school students of Bhoomi Network, an institution that has been trying to revive the lake for the past few years.

“We have created mud bund partitions to separate the sewage treated water and rainwater within the lake surface area in order to maintain the water quality. While the sewage water is used to water plants around the lake bed, the rainwater is used for cows, birds, fishes and other uses by residents around the area. With every lake revived, the impact is not just felt in the long term, but also in the common lives of people living around it,” Anand adds.

It was this principle of bringing a holistic transformation that pushed Bhoomi Network to support this cause and donate a sum of Rs 25 lakh. But the overall project needs Rs. 50 lakh more. The Better India, as part of the Lake Revivers Collective has also extended its support to the cause and is helping Anand raise the remaining amount through this crowdfunding campaign. Anand’s journey of transforming Bengaluru for good is a sum total of all our efforts and help, because, in this line of work, every single step counts and all of us can become changemakers.