BENGALURU, India (AP) — Sunil Kumar rowed his small boat, moving a few feet at a time, while he spread a fishing net across the weeds floating like a green carpet on Doddajala Lake. The ends of the net were then carried ashore and tied to a tractor and an earthmover, which pulled the bundled plants toward laborers ready to drag them out with pitchforks.

Once each netful of weeds was scooped out, they repeated the process. Kumar, a fisherman who grew up nearby, and the others have been working 10 hours a day for two weeks to clean this water as part of a wider effort to restore polluted lakes that are in danger of disappearing around Bengaluru, India’s fast-growing tech hub.

“Once the weed grows, all fish die. This is because the weed cuts out oxygen flow below the water and, of course, n

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