Wasted Heritage
Why should our waste lay waste to another place? To the north of India’s capital, Delhi, lies Bhalswa, a town infamous for a towering dumpsite, and subsequently, the worst urban degradation in the city. Bhalswa can be understood as resulting from infrastructural collapse, one where the city’s waste management system is too overburdened by its ever-growing population. However, Bhalswa is much more - a once integral ecosystem subject to decades of environmental degradation owing to neglect and marginalization. If there is a future for Bhalswa, it can only evolve from an acute understanding of its history and how it shaped the crude reality it presents today. In a synthesis of historic cartography, dated imagery, oral histories, and the author’s own analysis, ‘Wasted Heritage’ is a narrative exploring Bhalswa as it once could have been, to what we have driven it to be today.
Bhalswa, Delhi
Bhalswa through the ages
Bhalswa was once home to an integrated ecosystem surrounding its historic horseshoe lake
There was once a green and thriving neighbourhood
integrated to its surroundings and resilient to change,
It was a host to life and resources
supporting its neighbours with its abundance.
This was Bhalswa, the land of lakes and streams.
While today the Yamuna flows in a designated course across Delhi, there was a time when the great river ran free. In a meandering instance, it gave birth to one of India’s only horseshoe lakes. The magnificent water body sprung a vibrant ecosystem. In the wetlands, thrived a great diversity. As the lake hosted a variety of fish, there came in a plethora of storks, waterfowl, and cranes. In this resourceful land, several small villages came up. These were, Bhalsouuah, Jahangeerpor, and Mukundpur. Calling the floodplains home, and tilling its land, people made a living with the bounty of Mother Earth.
1807 Sketch of the Environs of Delhi, F.S. White.
Prospering settlements soon took over the ecosystem’s delicate balance
As the surrounding area grew to be a city, it drew hard lines for development.
Casting away Bhalswa and severing its lifelines.
Exposed, and vulnerable, Bhalswa could not protest,
In serving the city, it was given its leftovers.
Soon the city consolidated into the British capital. The growing imperial city called for infrastructural reforms. To manage the city’s sewage, its smaller streams turned into drains. The river Sahibi met a similar fate, turning into what is to date, the Najafgarh drain. To protect itself from flooding, the city developed dykes and embankments. And in catering to its mobility demands, an extensive network of roadways.
The free nation’s capital city had its ever-growing needs, and these required adequate response. This was in the form of hard lines severing its original landscape. Governing its future was a master policy. The development authority devised a master plan with a vision for the next two decades. Designed by a few, with little public participation, the plan set into action what Delhi was to be.
When the city drew its first masterplan, it considered Bhalswa in its inviolable greens.
For ease of administration, eight districts now formed the city. Surrounding these was a green belt to control unnecessary spillover. Beyond this, a network of 'Ring towns' to help decentralize its pressure. Belonging neither in any district nor in a ring town, quaint Bhalswa was part of the city’s green belt. The area was free to support its agricultural roots but was to also cater to a new Bhalswa dairy. The new occupation brought with it a new demographic, and a distinct species - the cattle.
Additionally, the plan suggested an infill strategy for the city's low-lying areas. These areas, which were prone to waterlogging, had little commercial value. For this, it suggested using the city's waste, as sanitary earth fills. This had two advantages. First, it was an immediate solution to the city's waste management concern. Second, it would yield usable land in the future.
What do you think of when it comes to waste? Is it stinky? Unsanitary? Unhygienic? Could you imagine living next to a place catering to a significant part of a city's waste? With certain opposition from the city and ring towns, the green belt became a convenient fix. The belt, at a midpoint in the city, allowed for cost-effective waste disposal.
Bhalswa's old floodplains were low-lying areas well connected through the GT Karnal Road and the Ring Road. In a strategic top-down decision, a sanitary landfill now took up seventy acres of land at Bhalswa.
Overlooking Bhalswa’s bounty, the surrounding city designated it as a site for waste disposal.
Concealed behind a veil of the city’s air pollution, Bhalswa’s landscape may resemble its origins.
Succumbing under pressure, the neighborhood soon collapsed
the leftovers piled up, and the landscape rendered grey.
As the city remembers Bhalswa, it doesn’t recall its lushness
but its colossal stinking mountain,
“oh, what an eyesore.”
As Delhi’s population grew multifold, nearing 19 million strong today, so did its waste. No amount of preparations could have been enough for this scenario. Needless to say, the city's waste management system took a toll. This reflects at every stage of the process from collection, to segregation. Yet, it’s seen best in the place no one wishes to see, the city’s sanitary landfills. Today, the sites are neither sanitary nor landfills. Instead, they are dumpsites, where the city’s waste is brought and dumped.
Just beyond the second masterplan’s development limits, Bhalswa’s true identity went unnoticed.
Caught in the margins of its vicennial plans, Bhalswa’s identity was rewritten.
Over the last decades, the dumpsite has rewritten Bhalswa’s identity. Catering to over half of the city’s generated waste, it now towers over the surrounding landscape. Alas, this looming visual is only the very visible part of our concern. As rainwater passes through decades-old waste, it takes toxins with it. At Bhalswa, this leachate has contaminated the groundwater table to grotesque extents. Groundwater around Bhalswa is unfit for consumption and has made the soil arid. Also affected is the historic Bhalswa lake which acts as a sink for the area’s water. Within the last decade itself, these nitrate-rich contaminants have led to the lake’s eutrophication, leading to considerable loss of biodiversity
Today, Bhalswa is only known for its colossal dumpsite and the worst living conditions in the city
The colossal dumpsite flattens its surrounding landscape
Ignored are its people, subject to live,
in the wickedness, the city created for itself.
Although there are plans, they lie far in the future.
The present is scarce, everyone for themselves.
What goes unseen are the 200,000 people living in the vicinity. These communities bear the brunt of the worst living conditions in the city while contributing little to it.
Bhalswa is Home to the worst living conditions in the city, yet, it's not uninhabited. Concealed behind the dumpsite’s monstrous stature live over 200,000 people. Communities in formal and informal settlements all continue to bear the brunt of the situation.
For the settlements at Bhalswa, living goes underserved. Communities with no access to water supply rely on groundwater. Those who can spend a significant part of their incomes purchasing the service. At Delhi’s waste sink, waste management is a grave concern. How can we expect communities living by a dumpsite to be conscious of waste management?
The dumpsite’s remediation is of great concern. But, so is the lake’s rejuvenation, and the community’s rehabilitation. No single solution is enough to solve the larger problem. Remediation of ecosystems requires an ecosystem of solutions.
What is largely unknown is the degenerate state of the area’s landscape and bearing victim, its inhabitants.
For some settlements, the dumpsite is a relatively new existence.
Can Bhalswa be what it once was?
Its commons and environs integrated for once,
We must join hands, this can be our cause,
A lot can be changed, bottom-up.
Bhalswa’s progenitor – the horseshoe lake – is hardly known of by anyone in the city. Getting little importance despite its value as natural heritage.
It may not be possible to go back in time and fix arrears that led to Bhalswa as it is today. However, a better Bhalswa is not utopian, or impossible. It can be made possible by working together. For long the city’s planning processes have overlooked people and their voices. To evolve a holistic understanding of the place, a bottom-up dialogue is essential. For this, we must work with the communities. To devise holistic solutions, it’s of essence to work with a collaborative of action agencies. With the Covid pandemic and the climate crisis, there is a newfound urgency. While we are all vulnerable, especially vulnerable are those who are currently disadvantaged. If we’re looking for a better future, now, is the time to act.
About Gunraagh Singh Talwar
Gunraagh is a young architect and design strategist with a belief in the potential of design as an enabler of social change and innovation. Through his time at architecture school, he’s worked to challenge existing conventions. He’s been fortunate to receive several accolades, notably the Berkeley Essay Prize and Travel Fellowship, and the C40 Students Reinventing Cities Competition. Since 2020, in a post-pandemic initiative, Gunraagh is leading Better Bhalswa - a think tank working to uplift grotesque realities plaguing our cities. More on that here: www.betterbhalswa.com
This story was produced as part of Water Seeker Fellowship 2021, a collaborative inititative of Living Waters Museum and Social and Political Research Foundation.
