Yamuna - Question of Cities

Delhi owes the Yamuna an ecologically-sound river-led city plan

The deterioration and shrinking of the Yamuna in Delhi have worsened over the decades despite thousands of crores spent. Constructions on its floodplains were ignored earlier; now, the Yamuna Action Plan itself includes riverfront development with concretisation even as long-time…

‘The Yamuna is a living and breathing thing. We are systematically killing it’

Although India’s vision of a river was historically been influenced by the British, urban plans in contemporary India too do not have an ecological perspective, say Dr Reema Bhatia and Meeta Kumar in this interview. Their research paper ‘Urbanising a…

The Yamuna: Memoir of a dying river

Nikeita Saraf, a Thane-based architect and urban practitioner, works as illustrator and writer with Question of Cities. Through her academic years at School of Environment and Architecture, and later as Urban Fellow at the Indian Institute of Human Settlements…

‘The government got votes from here, now claims the settlement is illegal’

What happens when a river’s relationships with people closest to it are broken and all talk of the river is reduced to drains and development, barrages and budgets? The people are invisibilised like the forgotten farmers and evicted slum dwellers…

The relentless fighters who cycle, campaign and rally to save Yamuna

Pankaj Kumar quit his job to work 24x7 for a clean Yamuna. Vikrant Tongad decided he would not be a silent spectator to the pollution in the river. Manu Bhatnagar chalked out a water policy with nature-based solutions. Nishant Pawar…

‘Give the river back its space. Give it a new spatial
role in a city’

São Paulo and Mumbai are similar in that the cities have seen massive urbanisation at the cost of rivers. The Tietê and Pinheiros rivers, in the Brazilian city, and the Mithi in Mumbai are choked by myopic policies and apathy.…

To rekindle Delhi’s relationship with the Yamuna, clean it up

The Yamuna has been Delhi’s lifeline for centuries but the city now has a severed, mostly utilitarian, relationship with it. Only two percent of the Yamuna flows through Delhi but the city is responsible for 76 percent of its pollution…

Delhi’s real town planner, the Yamuna, still gasps for life

Over the decades, even as multi-crore programmes to clean the river are expanded, the Yamuna and its floodplain continue to be polluted. Delhi takes from the Yamuna but treats it as a receptacle for its waste. As long as this…