Wazirabad threshold: Yamuna before and after

Standing atop a bridge leading to a pumping station at Wazirabad water works, Rashid Khan, 65, looked with an intent gaze at the abundant water.


This was the Yamuna he remembered from his younger days when he was into keeping elephants. He had lived near the ITO bridge with elephants for almost 30 years. Around 10 years ago, the government forcibly evicted them. Long before coming to the Yamuna banks, Rashid and his family had stayed at Ashoka Hotel to enable haathi rides for foreign tourists. 
Over the years, Delhi has had just 8-10 families – all from the same clan and there were a total of 20-22 elephants. But only 10-12 elephants remain today. 
Looking at a bountiful Yamuna, Rashid recalled, “The elephants used to enjoy in monsoon the most, bathing for hours. In summers, it was the hand pump drilled into the Yamuna flood plain, which was used for bathing them.”

Rasheed Khan, Hathi Wallah

The spot where he was standing was part of Delhi Jal Board’s water treatment plant (WTP) at Wazirabad, where members of the Yamuna Katha have gathered at the first stop of day one.   
RK Garg, DJB’s member (water works) gave an elaborate explanation about the water supply system and various sources of water for the national capital. There were interesting nuggets of information like, as much as 40 % of Delhi’s water needs - 325 MGD is the quantity of raw water – comes from Yamuna, or, of the various water user states of Yamuna, Haryana gets 45 %, Uttar Pradesh 30 %, Delhi just 6 % and the rest is shared by Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan. As much as 11 million cubic metres of water, i.e. almost 85 % of the water in the river in the entire year is contributed by rains. 
“In Delhi, up to 40-50 lakh people live in unauthorized colonies/slums in Delhi. Their sewage comes directly – untreated – to the river Yamuna,” he lamented. Immediately downstream of Wazirabad barrage start the various drains that empty Delhi’s sewage into the Yamuna. There is no natural water flow after this. 

R K Garg, member of DJB

Rashid nodded in agreement. Over the years he had seen the quality of Yamuna waters change from bad to worst. Overall, the quality of life on the Yamuna banks had changed for worst. Earlier, there was ample fodder for elephants. Fodder was patela – tall grass, sugarcane, jowar , bajra and even papal trees. “But more than anything else, slowly the pollution in Yamuna started taking its toll on the elephants’ skin,” Rashid rued. 
Dr Ritu Priya, public health specialist threw light on the history of Delhi as a capital city, specially, the city’s water history. There was a major cholera epidemic in the 1980s. “Over the ages, Delhi had always been a planned city. But in modern times, the unplanned growth has proved to be a major health hazard.” 

One of Rasheed's elephants getting prepared for a ride

For instance, British New Delhi had no place for class IV employees, she said. So they inhabited fringe colonies. These kind of colonies increased the quantity of untreated sewage being flown into the river. 
Her message: Go for de-centralisation of the water planning system. Second, use modern technology to do natural harvesting and revive natural streams. And last but never the least involve the citizens. “It should be part of the planning as to how we relate to the river,” she said.  

Dr Ritu Priya, JNU, public health specialist

But that is not the case. Government has taken over the ownership of the river from the community and hence restricted people’s access to the river. Rashid is a living example for it. With several government restrictions, there is hardly anyone in the elephant keeping business. The youngsters have turned to horse buggy business. 


Unaware of the plight of youngsters from elephant keeping families, another bunch of youngsters was quite gung ho about the Yamuna and ways to reduce pollution. Sardar Patel School from Lodi Colony had sent its students to Wazirabad WTP. The students – Abhilasha Bakre, Anshula Mehta, Ananjay Sharma, Adarsh Kumar Singh, Shrishti Banzal, Khushboo Chattree and Anoushka Kopila – all from class IX – made a presentation on the concept and their understanding of the National Urban Sanitation Policy vis-à-vis water distribution system, problems due to growing urbanization and possible solutions by community awareness. 


Then, DJB’s quality control officers Vinod Kumar and Pritam Singh showed the group around the water treatment plant, the various steps involved in water treatment. 
GIZ’s Regina Dube asserted it was important to understand the historical dimension for city’s sanitation history. “For the future, we need to understand and link the historical and the cultural dimensions. Also, people from the entire society need to sit together and come up with a developmental solution.”
Earlier, Arne Panesar from GIZ had pointed out how he had badly wanted to meet the haathiwala and ride elephant since he was in college. “The river is very much a symbol for many cities. But experts alone are not enough for thinking about rivers, we need people from all fields,” Panesar added.
Agreed Rashid, who is very clear about his ideas about the Yamuna: “Aadmi change hua, toh darya bhi hua (As the man changes, so has the river).”


So true, especially for Delhiites!!

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?”