The story of Kumudvathi River Project: When he was heading the Geomatics Center of Water Resources in the Government of Karnataka, Geologist Dr Lingaraju Yale had rejuvenated a 60 sq km streamlet. He thought, why not scale this to revive river basins using satellite-enabled remote sensing technology. In 2013, along with volunteers of The Art of Living and local villagers, he began organically working on the Kumudvathi river basin which was providing 60% of Bengaluru’s water needs but had begun to dry up.

In 2014, Dr. Yale implemented the innovative Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) process to build up groundwater levels. An independent study published in 2019 evaluated that during a single rainy season, the augmented recharge at 5% amounted to 2157 million litres. In gross financial terms that would be Rs 215.7 million saved.