A group of concerned citizens from neighbouring Munirka Enclave appealed to all RWAs in the area to create a people’s collective to take these issues to the relevant government departments
A group of concerned citizens from neighbouring Munirka Enclave appealed to all RWAs in the area to create a people’s collective to take these issues to the relevant government departments
The redevelopment of Vasant Udyaan, a DDA park in south Delhi’s Vasant Vihar, is the story of an audacious imagination at work.
For years, this area, next to Nelson Mandela Road and flanked by a forest, was a crime black spot. What was once a seasonal rivulet flowing through the area had deteriorated into a putrid nullah full of raw sewage. The park itself was an open-air lavatory sprawled around the ruins of the only extant garden-enclosed waterworks built by Sultan Firoz Shah Tughlaq 650 years ago.
While the open-air defecation was linked directly to the absence of toilets in the slums, the sewage was coming from the elite apartments in the area, the adjacent village, and the government colonies around Basant Lok, which had not been connected to sewer lines for more than 40 years.
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A group of concerned citizens from neighbouring Munirka Enclave appealed to all RWAs in the area to create a people’s collective — RWAs for Vasant Udyaan — to take these issues to the relevant government departments. They appealed to Anil Baijal, the then Lieutenant-Governor of Delhi, who took great interest in the project. The critical element, as the citizens’ group soon realised, was to find a way to negotiate the maze of government bodies with overlapping mandates.
Collaborative effort
With the help of Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB), the slum pockets were provided community toilets with septic tanks. DDA Landscape and Horticulture departments collaborated with the RWAs to redesign the park and forest, balancing attributes of Tughlaq-era gardens with modern-day urban requirements. The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), in association with INTACH, renovated the waterworks, while Delhi Jal Board and erstwhile South Delhi Municipal Corporation laid pipes that connected the colonies to the city’s sewage lines. The nearby Jaypee Hotel and Vasant Kunj Sewage Treatment Plant provided free treated water to irrigate the park.
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The park is today a tribute to this collaborative effort — core elements of its historical heritage remain intact; all, including pets, are welcome; CCTV cameras, the first in a DDA park, have been installed; and the MoU between Jaypee Hotel and the municipal corporation for free treated water has emerged as a model for potential collaborations to irrigate water-starved parks elsewhere in Delhi.
Crime is down to zero, and the park is a haven for families and children residing in both the colonies and the slums. The community has taken ownership of this park — it has shown corporates ways to contribute to solving the city’s environmental problems and provided the government with a blueprint for action if they would only break out of departmental silos.
The creation of Vasant Udyaan is an invaluable lesson that efforts to address issues of water, sanitation, health, heritage conservation, governance and community development cannot be viewed in isolation. More importantly, it has shown citizens of Delhi tangible, doable ways to redefine their relationship with the city, by being its active members and making its social spaces free, green, and truly vibrant.
(Avinash Kumar is director, Citizen Action for Water Sustainability (CAWS). Bipasha Majumder is an independent researcher and writer)