Manoj Misra
·
The Hindu Kushak Nullah in Sewa
Nagar near Nehru Stadium in New Delhi . Photo: V.V. Krishnan.
Rather than turning their faces away
from ganda nalas that happen to be essential to Delhi’s drainage system,
authorities and residents should try protecting and greening them
There is hardly any town in the
country that does not have its ganda (dirty) nala (drain). In
many places the ganda nala has become a part of the city’s psyche and
even the city’s directional landmark. Delhi today boasts of 22 such major
drains and both Meerut and Saharanpur have at least one each.
Look closely and you will find that
each one of them is the combined output of a network of many such smaller nalas,
some of which might even be originating from your own house, housing complex or
the locality. Ever given a thought to these nalas, their origin and if they
were always ganda?
The fact is that most, if not all,
are the creation of the natural topography of the place in question and
originated as storm water drains that carried the high flows during monsoon
rains to either yet another drain or to a nearby water body or a river. In case
of Delhi, it is the river Yamuna that has acted as the end destination of the
city’s high flows. Thus these nalas were essential features of the
natural drainage system of a town or city. Also in olden times, most of them
acted as the town’s greenways and sites of recreation. It was much later and
mostly during the last and the present century that we as part of our
‘development’ process converted them into ganda nalas.
Anything that is ganda abhors
us and we have a tendency to wish or shoo it out of sight. It is also a fact
that many of these ganda nalas exhale nauseating stench and become a
source of vector borne diseases, especially when water in them tends to
stagnate. No wonder there is a frequent clamour from affected people to seek
their covering and concretisation.
But is it the ganda nala
which is at fault deserving to be ‘fixed’ by the municipal authorities? Travel
to a ‘developed’ western nation, and one is hard put to locate such ganda
nalas? Surely they exist there, too, but have mostly been ‘fixed’ either
under a road, a culvert, a parking site or into pipes. But if that was the
correct ‘solution’, then why is there now, a growing clamour to “daylight” such
infrastructure?
“Day lighting” or a ‘greening of
grey (concrete) infrastructure’ is the process by which cities like
Philadelphia in the U.S. endeavour to ‘green’ themselves, by rediscovering
their lost or hidden streams and storm water drains and then expose them back
to the elements. This is taken up even when the costs for such reversal prove
prohibitive as a lot of effort, including enabling science, technology and
legislation is required to re-nature such sites.
Not many might recall that in the
year 1996, a dissertation by researcher Pallavi Kalia at the TVB School of
Habitat Studies, New Delhi looked at the drainage system in the city of Delhi
and then tested successfully the following hypothesis: “ The natural
drainage channels, existing as a part of a city’s fabric, if developed through
capitalising on their inherent characteristics, can be transformed from being
corridors of filth and squalor, into means of reinforcing the imageability of
the city, apart from making it functionally more efficient and ecologically
more sustainable.”
While the referred study had
focussed primarily on the Barapula drainage sub-system in Delhi, its
applicability to the rest of the city was found to be obvious.
Now as Delhi bids for a heritage city
and a world class city status, it would be best advised to not limit its ‘green
city’ claim to just the tree cover that it has justifiably achieved. How it
protects and suitably develops its natural drainage channels and reclaim those
that it has already lost shall be the litmus test of its claim to a world class
city. And since the tentacles of its natural drainage system spreads to every
nook and corner of the city, it shall as much be the responsibility of the
State authorities as of every resident of this city to work towards protection,
preservation and improvement of its natural drains.
The role of the city’s residents and
their associations (RWAs) in transforming every filthy drain in the city into a
welcome greenway is immense. For where does the ‘filth’ that clogs the drains
actually emanate from? Secondly, does it not make much better sense to
appreciate, value and work together to clean and green our drains now, rather
then spend a fortune at a later date to “daylight” them, a la many
cities in the West?
(The writer is the Convener of
Yamuna Jiye Abhiyaan)
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