Golden Jubilee of Yamuna’s riverfront destruction?

The sprawling green lawns bore no tell tale signs of being a riverfront. It was more of a manicured landscaped garden, which can be anywhere. In the background was the old Loha Pul, the sturdy iron bridge from British vintage.

Golden Jubilee Park with Loha Pul in the background

For a layman, the place was a wonderful opportunity to spend time by the river, though invisible from that point. However, it also offered a poignant reminder of the fact that in 2006, hundreds of people were rendered homeless after authorities evicted them forcibly.

Soon after its own golden jubilee, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) decided to give itself, a manicured lawn with several riverfront projects proposed.

This was the venue for an open air, open panel discussion: “Moving the Juggernaut called Delhi.” The Yamuna Katha team was joined by Manu Bhatnagar from Indian National Trust for Arts and Cultural Heritage and German elected representative Marie Luise von Halem, also the member of one of the state parliaments in Germany.

Open discussion in Golden Jubilee Park

German member of state parliament
Marie Luise v. Halem engaging in the discussion

Initiating the discussion, Bhatnagar pointed out how rural areas are decreasing and urban areas are increasing. “Even in the city, the natural landscapes are vanishing and more and more artificial landscapes are coming up, just like this park.”

Immediately Chhote Khan got up to say, “The authorities removed the slums from this very place where we are sitting because they labeled them as dirtying the river. But they have not yet stopped pollution by way of sewage being emptied into the river through a number of drains. Bhatnagar added fire to it: “Pollution is just one problem. Other is the reduced flow of river.”

Echoed Bhola Kashyap: “My livelihood depends upon the river. Every year there is less and less water. Earlier there were crocodiles and farms all along the river bank.”

Bhola making his point

His Babita, who is an active partner in his business too, drew attention to the fact that almost eight months the river flows with it only garbage and filth. Only three months of monsoon, there is ample water and they get good catch.

GIZ’s Aparna Das played the devil’s advocate as she said, she is interested in “a river facing multi-storied apartment building. Why do we need crocodiles anyways?”

The discussion then went on touching various aspects such as clear water indicators, ground water recharge, more and more land being reclaimed in the name of bridges and various other structures, definition of city, approach of the administrators, what teachers can do and students do, riverfront development and so on and so forth.  

It also had death-knell sounding declaration by the faithful such as Bhola who asserted: “Yamuna will ultimately claim back its lost land.”

Gayatri Chatterjee, one of the core members, could empathies with this feeling. “I like the river-people connect. In fact, I react to the rivers,” she said.

Has a stong connection to rivers: Gayatri Chatterjee

Someone who had lived for five years by the side of the Ganga in West Bengal and later, when she lived in Bihar, could see Suvarnarekha from her house, she feels there is “something almost like punarjanma (re-birth) about my river connection. If I am travelling, sleeping, I wake up when I approach a river.”

On the same lines, the question if the students are taken to the riverfront was posed. The two teachers Urmi Chakraborty and Vidhu Narayanan admitted the students were not taken to the river. So was the DDA’s latest announcement about riverfront development was discussed threadbare and also discussed was the need to develop and nurture the ‘river connect’. “But will that attempt get my child a job tomorrow?” asked Aparna, playing the devil now.

Erupted Gayatri: “It is not a question of job market. We have to think in realistic terms. Children should know the relation between them and the river.” Gayatri, who teaches cinema in India and abroad too, said, “Teaching cinema, you turn into a social scientist or a philosopher, actually both.”

Now, since last 30 years settled in Pune. But when young she had traveled to places all over the country: UP, MP, Bihar and West Bengal etc. In her late 30s, she remembers coming from Muradnagar along in father’s car and halt at the roadside at the Yamuna. Coming down from the vehicle, they would go straight to the vehicle, which would be tarbuja, kakadi, Kharbuja etc.

Towards the end, the Yamuna Katha team was joined by another activist for another river. Anil Madhav Dave, who runs Narmada Samagra working in Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, said, “Human beings think about the river as if his/her efforts would save the river. What can a human with a life span of 70-80 years do for a river that has been flowing since ages?” Dave said.     

The tone for conclusion was set by Sadhu ram, a rustic from the hinterlands: “The authorities have ‘shrunk’ the river. They put themselves above the Almighty.” 

Living on the Yamuna Bank

Yamuna hardly finds a mention in day-to-day conversations of Delhiites. So for Shubham Mishra, another member of the core team of Yamuna Katha, it was a realization, brought in by the Yamuna itself.

Shubham’s home is near Rajghat, on the Ring road, metres away from Yamuna. Rajghat, more famous for Mahatma Gandhi’s memorial today, was once a prosperous ghat (stepped embankment) of the Yamuna. It was exclusive for the royalty and hence the name Raj ghat.

But like most of the Delhiites of his age, Shubham, a trained urban planner, only knew, yes, Delhi has river. But once in while there is heavy flooding and the banks are submerged. “Then we realize we have a river,” Shubham says as he recalls the days of frenzy that come with the floods.

But slowly, the flood plains were reclaimed and exploited for commercial purpose. And the places are many. Qudasia ghat, the Yamuna Bazar, the Rajghat, power plants near ITO and now, sanitized, landscaped gardens, not to mention the number of bridges and flyways… the metro stations, Akshardham temple … and the list goes on endless.

“If we build on the floodplains, the water will always find its way back,” Shubham points out.

Shubham, who has been constantly visiting the Yamuna banks for the last two months, has discovered a new passion. Toponomy – the branch of lexicology that studies the place names of a region or a language – of the various ghats has intrigued him no end. “Come to think of it, there were different names for each of these ghats. Now, all we have is ghat number 1 to 32 at Yamuna Bazar.”

Losing the names is akin to losing an identity, says Shubham, who loves Yamuna and Delhi equally. “The very fact that the each of the places had a different name, means these places were different. Today, everything looks the same. Each of these ghats had a different purpose to fulfill. It gives us a glimpse of what kind of river front existed then? Qudasia ghat was different and so was the ghat in front of Kotla.”

Today, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) is planning a sanitized and concretized riverfront, something, which is likely to be built in clichéd sarkari style. But even when such a riverfront comes up, would the Delhiites sit in front of a stinking filthy river that is almost a drain today?

Shubham’s no nonsense reply: “First there has to be a river, there has to be water in it.”

Yamuna: A Paradise Lost

There goes this famous anecdote about Hazrat Nizamuddin, the Sufi saint residing in Delhi in the early 14^th century. When he saw an old lady drawing water from a well even when she lived near Yamuna, he asked her why.

“My husband is very old. We have nothing to eat. Yamuna’s water is very tasty, so tasty that it induces hunger. I don’t want this to happen to us,” the lady replied.

Can anyone say this about Yamuna waters today? Till about 50 years ago, the Yamuna was very much clean, even in Delhi. As the demographic change took place over the years, the late 1980s saw the population explosion and the new millennium saw widespread migration from hinterlands to the national capital, the stress on the Yamuna only increased.

That exactly is what ails the Yamuna today. Shubham does the math: “Earlier, the population was much lesser and scattered. The resources were de-centralized. Delhi had hundreds of lakes, ponds, wells and baolis (step wells). On the one hand, people were dependent on the water bodies in their areas and on the other hand, there was hardly any human waste flowing into the river.”

Today, the situation is exactly reversed. Delhi is entirely dependent on the Yamuna to cater to its drinking water needs. And at the same time, the river is used as a channel for disposal of sewage, creating two-way pressure on the Yamuna.

The Yamuna was never seen in isolation all these centuries. People were always aware of the connection … through surface channels or through underground aquifers. He asks how can anyone forget Neher-i-Bahisht?

There was this all wonderful canal system. In 14^th century, the Tughlaq dynasty built the Neher-i-Bahisht (literally, stream of paradise) parallel to the river. It was later restored during the Mughal rule in the early 17^th century by Ali Mardan Khan, an engineer in the Mughal court. The canal started from Benawas, near the place where Yamuna enters the plains and after running through almost the entire cluster of ancient villages, reached the medieval city of Shahjahanabad only after which it drained into the Yamuna.

The Neher-i-Bahisht was in reality, the stream of paradise. It was an apt description of the phenomenon – of providing the elixir of life to people on its banks, making Delhi the very heaven people crave to get to, turning it into a paradise that brought calm into the Delhi walas life.

But where has this paradise gone? It seems we have lost this paradise and how?

Sums up Shubham: “Do we have any other option but to decentralize and take the pressure off the Yamuna?”