Commonwealth games: Developing or destroying Delhi

It was a silent sunday morning. A truck full of red stone reached karol bagh market. Local residents were happy that beautification work for the road in their area is at last going to start. The stone used to build road divider years back is now getting older and not giving a nice look to the visitors. Old stone used in the divider and pavement of the road is being replaced by the new red stone and the waste stone was loaded into trucks and moved from there to an unknown place.

Every cornor of the city is getting its share of development in the name of Commonwealth games. Thosands of crores of rupees flowing down the drain, resulting into tons of building waste coming out of renovation work. Anand Parbat ridge area is also getting its share of the commonwealth games development but in the form of hundrads of tons of building waste and stone pieces every day brought from different parts of the city and dumped here. Local residents are not happy with the development taking place in the city as they are getting only the destruction of the ridge and new slums as a result of this development work. May be things are looking like a puzzle so let me open the string of the story.

Anand Parbat is a part of Aravali range with rocks and a green of about 200 acres surrounded by industrial area of the central delhi. This land belongs to DDA and was full of green cover till few months back. But now jhuggi mafia along with builders & DDA officials have converted this area into dumping ground for the building waste. Builders working on the commonwealth games projects found a nearby place to dump their waste building material and mafia got success in making this area a plane ground by dumping as much as 50 feet of building material. Mafia sell small jhuggi plots on these grounds to the migrated labour class in Rs. 60000 to 80000. Residents of the nearby area are so surprised to see the speed of dumping work going on here and the number of new slums developing overnight on the ground made by leveling the rocks. One resident Asharam Gautam made several comlaints to the nearest police station and DDA officials, refering to the supreme court judgement in the year 2001. Supreme court directed the concerned agencies to stop any dumping in the area by imidiate effect and declared any dumping in the ridge area as illegal. As per another local resident Chander prakash ‘ I born at this place only and we use to play in these rocks. This area was very green but almost destroyed over the past two years by dumping building waste and by development of new jhuggis on the leveled land’.

I spoke to the local MLA Rajesh Lilothia about the dumping work & the making of new jhuggis in the area. He was very comfortable in accepting that ‘this is in our knowledge that a large number of jhuggis are coming up in the area and we informed about this to DDA authorities’. So easy to say that the other agency is responsible for the issue. Later by sources I got to know that the residents of the new slum use MLA’s letter of recommendation to get a new electricity connection. Government made promises that no slum will be there in Delhi by the time of commonwealth games. But the true story is about involvement of elected members of the government as well as the officials in providing a ground for creation of new slum in the capital.

If the work will continue the same way as it is going on, Anand Parbat ridge will vanish by the time Commonwealth games take place. Government need to understand that city is not all about high rise buildings and stones placed for beautification, it is also about the natural belongings of the city. If development in the name of commonwealth games keep spending the city’s natural tresuary, the claim by government will come true.

Yes, as government claim, people will always remember the work done in the name of commonwealth games. But these memories are not going to be sweet for sure.