When former Maharashtra DGP Suryakant Jog retired, he didn't just sit around and bore people with talk of how he was the best DGP the state ever had. Instead, he settled down in Maharashtra's Amravati district and quietly worked to save the district from a perennial water crisis.
Seventy-five year old Jog, who runs a Sainik School at Chikhaldara in Amravati, is a water conservation hero. Chikhaldara has had a water shortage for as long as it can remember. Jog began by harvesting rain water at his school and storing it in six storage tanks. That's about six lakh litres. When the school closes for the summer break, villagers use the water stored in these tanks.
He also constructed 100 rain harvesting structures along a 15-km stretch between Morshi and Amravati. The result: ground water has risen by nearly 8 to 10 feet in three years. So when Jog was named for this year's Vasantrao Naik Jalsansadhan Puraskar for water conservation, Amravati knew their water man had finally got his due.