G. D. Agrawal

G. D. Agrawal Swami Gyan Swaroop Sanand
G.D. Agrawal at a meeting in Varanasi at Sarv Seva Sangh, Rajghat in October 2011
Born	1932 Kandhla, Muzaffarnagar district, Uttar Pradesh, British Raj
Residence	Chitrakoot, Madhya Pradesh
Nationality	Indian
Education	Civil Engineering Environmental Engineering
Alma mater	IIT Roorkee, University of California at Berkeley
Occupation	Environmental Engineer
Employer	Government of India Central Pollution Control Board, Civil and Environmental Engineering at IIT Kanpur
Known for	Stopping construction of dams on the Bhagirathi River in 2009
Title	First Member-Secretary (CPCB), former Head of the Department (IIT)
Term	17 years at IIT Kanpur

G. D. Agrawal alias Swami Gyan Swaroop Sanand (born 20 July 1932) is the doyen of environmental engineers in India. After a long career, he continues to teach and inspire students as an Honorary Professor of environmental sciences at the Mahatma Gandhi Chitrakoot Gramodaya Vishwavidyalaya, in Chitrakoot, Madhya Pradesh. He is notable for his successful fast in 2009 to stop the damming of the Bhagirathi River

Born to a farming family in Kandhla, Muzaffarnagar district, Uttar Pradesh in 1932, he studied in local primary and secondary schools and graduated in civil engineering from the University of Roorkee (now IIT Roorkee). While he was the member secretary of the Central Pollution Control Board during 1979-80, he was also a visiting professor for environmental engineering at the University of Roorkee.

He began his professional career as a design engineer in the Uttar Pradesh state Irrigation Department, and later obtained a PhD in environmental engineering from the University of California at Berkeley. He has authored many scientific publications. Agrawal was raised to be deeply religious and educated to be rigorously scientific. In July 2011, he became a Hindu sannyasi and now he is known by his new name Swami Gyanswaroop Sanand.

He was the first member-secretary of the Government of India's Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) . He was formerly head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at IIT Kanpur. Agrawal is a sought-after environmental impact assessment consultant and is a director of Envirotech Instruments (P) Limited, New Delhi, a company that he established with some of his former students from IIT-Kanpur. He is an engineer's engineer, the person his peers turn to for solutions to difficult technical problems. At CPCB he was influential in shaping India's pollution control regulatory structure. He has been a member of various government committees shaping policy-making and administrative mechanisms to improve India's environmental quality.