“#OccupyYamuna”? Before Sri Sri’s extravaganza, it was Akshardham -Governance Now

“#OccupyYamuna”? Before Sri Sri’s extravaganza, it was Akshardham

Faith might move mountains but off late it has been ruining the river

GN Bureau | March 9, 2016

#narendra modi #akshardham #delhi #yamuna #religion #culture #environment #art of living #sri sri ravishankar

Going by the activities over the years in the riverbed and floodplains in Delhi, there seems to be a veritable #OccupyYamuna campaign going on. Sri Sri Ravishankar’s Art of Living (AOL), with its three-day extravaganza from March 11, is only the latest in the list.

Before AOL was the “millennium” bus depot of the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC), which came up in around the time of the Commonwealth Games of 2010. When the green authorities questioned it, DTC pleaded that it was a temporary structure. It stands there six years later, with no signs of winding up anytime soon.

But the depot had a precedent nearby, in the Commonwealth Games Village – which is not a village but an upscale apartment complex, initially meant for the Games visitors’ stay and now given over to government employees and private buyers. It stands right in the middle of the riverbed.

The Games Village, however, could point to another precedent: Delhi Metro’s Yamuna Bank station and the adjoining residential quarters for its staff that came up around 2009.

All of them together can point fingers to a monumental precedent: Akshardham, the original religious counterpart of Disneyland, standing gloriously in the riverbed. Apparently, when its construction began in 1999, there was no requirement of the environmental clearance, which became mandatory by the time it was completed in 2004. It has a long history of legal battles. Instead of going through the fine print of legalese, it should suffice to say that if you take a look at it from above, from Google Earth, the magnificent, Guinness-record-making structure stands ‘within’ the floodplains.

[By a curious coincidence, both the Art of Living and the Gujarat-based Bochasanvasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha - the organisation behind the Akshardham - have often proudly boasted of their close ties with the BJP in general and prime minister Narendra Modi in particular.]

In short, be it the UPA or the NDA, be it matters of faith or of matters secular, the Yamuna has never been seen by authorities as a living river. It seen as an otherwise wasted land resource available which should be put to good use when the capital faces space crunch. No wonder the capital meets its water requirements from rivers hundreds of kilometres away, while the one river within the city is virtually a drain.

It’d a be cliché, even if a spooky one, to say that it remains to be seen where the Yamuna waters will find the way, if the river has what in experts’ language is called once-in-a-century kind of floods, the kind Chennai witnessed last year and other Indian cities have witnessed in recent years.

The Delhi government headed by Arvind Kejriwal has announced plans for the beautification of the Yamuna, possibly on the lines of the beautification of the Sabarmati in Ahmedabad. The time for cosmetics might be long past.

Comments

Other News

Report of India’s G20 Task Force on Digital Public Infrastructure released

The final ‘Report of India’s G20 Task Force on Digital Public Infrastructure’ by ‘India’s G20 Task Force on Digital Public Infrastructure for Economic Transformation, Financial Inclusion and Development’ was released in New Delhi on Monday. The Task Force was led by the

How the Great War of Mahabharata was actually a world war

Mahabharata: A World War By Gaurang Damani Sanganak Prakashan, 317 pages, Rs 300 Gaurang Damani, a Mumbai-based el

Budget expectations, from job creation to tax reforms…

With the return of the NDA to power in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections, all eyes are now on finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s full budget for the FY 2024-25. The interim budget presented in February was a typical vote-on-accounts, allowing the outgoing government to manage expenses in

How to transform rural landscapes, design 5G intelligent villages

Futuristic technologies such as 5G are already here. While urban users are reaping their benefits, these technologies also have a potential to transform rural areas. How to unleash that potential is the question. That was the focus of a workshop – “Transforming Rural Landscape:

PM Modi visits Rosatom Pavilion at VDNKh in Moscow

Prime minister Narendra Modi, accompanied by president Vladimir Putin, visited the All Russian Exhibition Centre, VDNKh, in Moscow Tuesday. The two leaders toured the Rosatom Pavilion at VDNKh. The Rosatom pavilion, inaugurated in November 2023, is one of the largest exhibitions on the histo

Let us pledge to do what we can for environment: President

President Droupadi Murmu on Monday morning spent some time at the sea beach of the holy city of Puri, a day after participating in the annual Rath Yatra. Later she penned her thoughts about the experience of being in close commune with nature. In a message posted on X, she said: