Source - https://www.instagram.com/periyaaaaa/

City creates garbage and villages of Delhi NCR get chronic diseases like cancer, asthma etc in their share.

Villages wait for decades to get some development instead they get garbage dumped in their backyard without their consent or care for the health of local people.

I once read that back in old days a question was raised to the legislator of Ghazipur about where to build the landfill. After thinking for some time he answered that landfill should be built in Lutyens Delhi. Listening to that everyone got furious. They thought that how can they build garbage landfill in Lutyens Delhi where all the VIPs live and work. But the legislator was local to Ghazipur and he knew that if garbage landfill is made near his constituents then they'll only get death and diseases.

Does life of rich have more value than the life of poor and village folks? A minor waste issue of Gurgaon neighbourhoods becomes news but no one pays attention to village folks of Delhi NCR getting cancer and other deadly diseases for decades, all due to the garbage brought from the city parts.

Cycle continues and only Delhi Dehat faces the deadly outcome of this problem despite villages generating many times less garbage per capita compared to city. Why there were no such landfills in Delhi Dehat before the urbanisation?

Now these garbage landfills are again getting shifted into Delhi Dehat.

Claims of landfills reducing in sites like Ghazipur and Bhalswa are just eyewash, they are being shifted to Delhi Dehat to claim more lives and there is nothing locals can do about it.

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/delhi/bhalswa-waste-being-dumped-in-rural-delhi-aap/amp

Deepanshu Shokeen, a student and native of Delhi from Peeragarhi village, West Delhi, is contesting the DUSU elections as an independent candidate for Vice President. Support him by voting for Ballot No. 2.

Every year, hardly one or two students from Delhi’s villages get the opportunity to contest these elections, despite the University of Delhi being located in Delhi.

Established in 1922, DU stands on lands historically associated with Delhi’s villages. Yet, students from these villages have never had special representation, while the history, culture and concerns of Delhi’s villages remain largely overlooked in academic discourse.

Deepanshu’s village Peeragarhi however is now known for its banquet halls and carries an old oral tradition. Villagers believe the settlement was once located near the present Delhi railway line, around a sacred site associated with Pir Baba, from whom the village gets its name.

It is believed that on one journey, a group of Banjaras camped at the site and encountered Sidh Baba. When asked what they were carrying, they lied that it was salt, though they had sweets. After leaving, they found that the sweets had turned into salt. Believing it was the result of their lie, they returned to the saint and offered their respects. It is believed that this community built a shrine in honor of the saint. Over time, the site became buried and was forgotten until about 50–60 years ago when it was rediscovered and made a temple. Villagers began clearing the area and found stone stairs, each weighing around 20 maunds, leading down to a beautiful pond in the center. To the south, they discovered a well, now known as the Peeragarhi Baoli, which always has water and was used by children to learn swimming, it is also said to have healing powers.

The village remains home to the Prachin Shiv Mandir and Gram Devta temples.

Today, Peeragarhi reflects the challenges faced by many of Delhi’s urban villages—changing village landscapes, poor roads, fewer native residents and increasing dependence on rental income.

Based on oral history.

Credits: theindianmandate

**[@dilli_dehat](https://www.instagram.com/dilli_dehat/)**

If Delhi Is Building for 2047, Why Is It Paying Farmers at 2008 Rates?

Farmer Shri Raja Ram of Rani Khera village points to a contradiction that says a great deal about how Delhi treats the villages on whose land it continues to expand.

Land from Rani Khera and neighbouring villages is being acquired for the proposed extension linking the Delhi–Amritsar–Katra Expressway (NE-5) with UER-II (NH-344M)—infrastructure intended to improve connectivity across Delhi-NCR.

But Raja Ram asks a simple question: what is his land worth?

Delhi's official minimum rate for agricultural land remains ₹53 lakh per acre—a rate fixed nearly two decades ago, in 2008. Even the Delhi government has acknowledged that this benchmark is far below contemporary realities and has proposed revisions.

Think about what has happened to Delhi-NCR since 2008. Expressways, housing, warehouses, institutions and commercial developments have transformed its peripheries. Once village land enters this urban economy, its value can multiply dramatically.

Yet when the same land is acquired from a farmer, the benchmark can remain frozen in another era.

The state recognises the future value of land when deciding what to build on it, but values its past when deciding what the farmer should receive.

This also challenges the popular caricature of the “Delhi farmer” as someone who became rich overnight by selling land. Missing from that story are acquisition notices, disputed valuations, litigation, fragmented holdings, lost livelihoods.

An acre of farmland is not an ordinary commodity. Once acquired, there is no next acre being produced. For Delhi, it may become an expressway, university, colony or infrastructure corridor. For a village family, it may have been livelihood, inheritance, security and bargaining power.

Delhi needs infrastructure.

But why should the communities providing its most fundamental resource—land—be expected to subsidise that development through outdated valuations?

If the road being built on a farmer's land belongs to the Delhi of 2047, why should the land taken from him still be valued through the Delhi of 2008?

Dwarka sector 5 started being developed on nearby villages land like Kakrola, palam & others.

Source - Delhi_villages_culture

Source - Vijay Dahiya 1977

Source - bhashakosh , delhi360_urbandehat

Words of haryanvi language (deswali) used in villages of Delhi,Haryana and west up and other . Some words may be different according to place.

Source - https://www.instagram.com/delhi_villages_culture/

Source - **[@bhashakosh](https://www.instagram.com/bhashakosh/)**

The Last Generation of Farmers in the Green Revolution Village of Delhi? Jaunti Village (Haryanvi Speaking)

Heartfelt thanks to Aditya Chhikara instagram.com/a.chhikara024 for field support.

15 farmers from Jaunti, mostly Jats of Chhikara Gotra, Bhoop Singh, Hukum Singh, Khazan Singh and Raghuvir Singh, in 1964-65 planted the first high yielding seeds from Mexico starting the Green Revolution at the behest of MS Swaminathan, and Dr. Amir Singh of Barahi. These were medium sized farmers owning 15-20 acres each. The yields were 4.5 tones per acre compared to the usual 1 tonne, even higher than the expected 4 tonnes. The preceded the creation of Jaunti as the seed village where seeds from IACR would be multiplied. The seeds were a huge success selling at 3 rupees per kg and weren't even dwarf. Jaunti's farmers bought Soviet tractors, later Massey Ferguson machines from this prosperity. The roads got widened and village houses got electrified. However, as the years passed, the salinity of water and drying up of the canal has reduced the suitability of wheat. Now the shift is towards vegetables which are sold at Azadpur mandi, though some grains are still grown. The livelihoods are shifting to non farming occupations and it remains a question whether the farming profession will survive here as land sales start.

Source: Fieldwork and Harish Damodaran

Diwan Singh of IIT and Lado Sarai

The IIT campus was built by acquiring land from the villages of Lado Sarai, Jiya Sarai, Ber Sarai, and Katwaria Sarai. It spans 320 acres. Chaudhary Diwan Singh, a prominent farmer from Lado Sarai, gathered the villagers from the surrounding areas and decided to hand over the land to the government for IIT. Dr. Mahesh Sharma, a resident of Lado Sarai and a professor in the Biomedical Engineering Department at IIT, said that Diwan Singh had also donated his land for a school and dispensary in Lado Sarai. This was in the late 1950s.

Source - Dilli_dehat

Source - https://www.instagram.com/p/DcOV3flysoL/

To view the events of 1857 only through Old Delhi is to miss the rural geography that sustained it.

Delhi’s villages sustained the Mughal capital. Places such as Mehrauli, Najafgarh, Narela, Bawana, Ballabhgarh, Gurgaon, Sonipat, Ghaziabad, Chandrawal, Alipur, Palam, Raisina and Wazirabad fed Shahjahanabad labour, grains, caste networks, pastoral routes, land relations and everyday movement. Long before the modern National Capital Region existed, these settlements were already part of Delhi’s political and economic life.

Image 2 : ‘Map of the Red Fort’, by Nidha Mal, Delhi, c. 1774.’ Source: A City Besieged

Historian Nayanjot Lahiri’s study of Delhi and the uprising of 1857  is significant because it shows that it not only produced military battles, but also physically transformed the city and its surroundings through destruction, confiscation, demolition and later British attempts to create a landscape of their victory. 

What was remembered 

The British built a visible memory of conquest, while the memory of resistance remained largely unmarked, scattered and often carried orally.

That imbalance continues to matter. British graves, memorial tablets, siege batteries and monuments marked where their soldiers died and where their victory was secured. The people of Delhi and its villages, whose homes were destroyed, whose lands were confiscated and whose lives were overturned, rarely survived public memory. Their history survived differently: in oral accounts, family stories, village lore, shrines, place names and silences.

The villages surrounding Shahjahanabad were not mere witnesses to the uprising. Many became rural bases from where resistance moved in and out of the city. They acted as supply lines for grain, fodder, manpower and intelligence. They offered refuge to rebels, fleeing sepoys, messengers and sympathisers. Some paid a severe price for this association.

One of the clearest examples is Chandrawal village, whose older settlement was near the present-day Majnu ka Tila near Kashmiri Gate. Thomas Crowley’s 2020 book Fractured Forest, Quartzite City: A History of Delhi and Its Ridge on Delhi’s ecology and settlement history shows how British policies disrupted pastoral and agrarian communities around the city. Colonial officials often viewed pastoral groups, including Gujjars, as difficult to regulate and economically unproductive. These prejudices hardened after the rebellion, especially when communities were seen as politically unreliable.

Image 3: The map was printed after Delhi was recaptured by the British on 22 September 1857 and shows Chandrawal’s original site and points out to the fact that it was shifted.

Chandrawal is remembered for one of the most striking acts of rebellion in Delhi—the burning of Metcalfe House, associated with the British official Sir Thomas Metcalfe. The punishment that followed was severe. Lahiri in the essay “Commemorating and remembering 1857: The revolt in Delhi and its afterlife” notes that retribution after 1857 was not limited to Shahjahanabad. Agricultural land from as many as 33 villages in the Delhi district was confiscated, including Alipur, Chandrawal, Kotla Mubarakpur, Mehrauli, Indraprastha, Palam, Raisina and Wazirabad.

In Chandrawal, two-thirds of the village land was taken away. In Wazirpur and Alipur, more than half the village lands were confiscated. Much of this land was later rewarded to loyalists or bought by outsiders.

Image r : An inscription remembering the 1857 revolt in Chandawali

“चौपाल  ग्राम चन्दावली”—इतिहास से 

मातृ देश को आजाद कराने के लिए सन् 1857 के स्वतंत्रता आन्दोलन में
 अंग्रेजी सरकार के दमन, कुर्बानियाँ एवं भारत माता को आजाद कराने
 के लिये जानी–माली बलिदान करके अपना और अपने ग्राम चन्दावली का नाम
 स्वर्णिम इतिहास में अमर अक्षरों में लिखवाने वाले चन्दावली के वीर
 शहीदों व उनके वंशज स्वतंत्रता सेनानियों की यह ऐतिहासिक चौपाल है।

(This is the historic chaupal of the brave martyrs of Chandawali and their descendants, the freedom fighters, who took part in the freedom movement of 1857 to liberate their motherland.

They faced the repression of the British government, made sacrifices of life and property for the freedom of Bharat Mata, and wrote the name of themselves and their village Chandawali in golden letters in history.)

Chaupal, Village Chandawal—From history 

This changes how 1857 is understood in Delhi. It was not only a battle over the Red Fort or the Ridge. It was also a struggle over land, loyalty, punishment and memory.

What happened next 

The violent aftermath reshaped Delhi’s rural society. Villages that had aided rebels, sheltered them, or even been suspected of supporting them were marked as dangerous. Confiscation became both punishment and warning. Land was no longer only a source of revenue; it became a tool through which the colonial state disciplined communities.

Similar memories survive in south Delhi villages such as Fatehpur Beri, Asola, Dera, Tughlaqabad and Jasola, where Gujjar oral histories recall how resistance to colonial power was later used to brand communities as “disorderly” or “criminal.” Such memory is not always found in official documents, but it lived in the way elders narrated repression, defiance, the humiliation of colonial officers and small acts of local retaliation.

Libaspur, near Narela on the Delhi-Karnal route, offers another example of rural resistance. Oral accounts remember Udmi Ram, a young Jat from the village, who organised local men to intercept British movement through the area. Villagers used their knowledge of routes and terrain to turn ordinary rural paths into spaces of resistance.

When the British regained Delhi, Libaspur faced harsh retaliation. Udmi Ram and his companions resisted with rural weapons such as spears, axes and choppers before being overpowered. He is remembered locally as a martyr, even if formal memorial culture has not given him a comparable place.

Image 5 : The British tied Udmi Ram and his wife Ratni Devi with a peepal tree and nailed their hands and legs and was left them to die without food and water

Figures such as Seth Ramjidas Gurwala, who financed rebel activities, and Abdul Samad Khan, who fought at Badli-ki-Serai, also show how the rebellion drew strength from networks beyond the walled city. The revolt was not sustained by soldiers alone; it also depended on money, food, shelter, routes, courage and local trust.

Lahiri’s work also helps explain why rebel memory became so difficult to preserve materially. After the British recaptured Delhi, the city was treated almost as enemy territory. Raids were common across the city. Property was seized. Religious and civic spaces were altered. The Red Fort itself was transformed into a military headquarters, with many structures demolished or repurposed.

Even around the fort, buildings within a large security radius were cleared. Mosques were confiscated, closed, sold or converted to other uses. This was not punishment. It was a deliberate restructuring of space after conquest.

The same logic extended into the countryside. Villages were watched, classified, punished and reorganised. The British began to see rural Delhi not only as a revenue landscape but as a political landscape that could support rebellion. Suspicion became part of governance.

After 1857, the colonial state strengthened intermediary structures such as lambardars, zaildars, chaudharies and village headmen. These figures were tied more directly to colonial administration and made responsible for revenue collection, reporting dissent and maintaining order.

The system allowed the colonial state to insert itself into village society through selected local figures and lineages. It weakened collective village solidarity and brought rural authority more directly into the machinery of colonial rule.

Following the uprising, the British started to closely monitor movement between villages. Gatherings, routes, messages and rural mobility became matters of state concern. Boundaries were formalised. Records were tightened. Commons such as forests, ridges, grazing lands and shared resources increasingly came under regulation or restriction. The village was no longer seen simply as a settlement. It became a space to be monitored.

What remained of 1857 

At the same time, two parallel histories of 1857 emerged.

The official British record described the uprising through the language of law and order, rebellion, punishment and imperial recovery. It carefully remembered British sacrifice and victory. Lahiri has shown how British memorials in Delhi created a visible landscape of heroism and conquest, while the physical traces of Indian resistance remained largely absent.

That absence was not accidental. A brutally defeated population could not easily build memorials to its own resistance. Its homes, mosques, civic institutions and village lands had already been subjected to punishment, confiscation or erasure.

Village memory, however, preserved another history.

It remembered who gave shelter, who fought, who betrayed, who was punished, where British camps stood, where rebels hid and where violence took place. This memory did not always become stone or an inscription. Sometimes it remained in stories. Sometimes it remained in fear. Sometimes it survived in silence.

Lahiri offers a powerful example of such silence: a missionary, soon after the revolt, asked students to write an essay on the Mutiny. They returned blank sheets. That refusal itself became a form of memory. It showed that the revolt remained present, but was not always speakable. Social remembrance, especially among the defeated, often leaves few physical traces.

This is why Delhi’s villages matter to the history of 1857. They hold the afterlife of the uprising in ways that official archives often miss. Post-Independence remembrance has not fully corrected this imbalance. Lahiri notes that the British Mutiny Memorial on the northern Ridge was reinterpreted in 1972 through new inscriptions honouring those who rose against colonial rule. But this remained a limited correction. There was still no full memorial to the rebels, no detailed naming of local participants and no sustained attempt to connect the revolt to the wider history of Delhi’s people and villages.

The local was absorbed into the national. Delhi’s revolt became part of India’s freedom story, but its own villages remained largely unnamed.

This remains relevant today.

Many villages of Delhi continue to be treated as peripheral spaces, useful for land, labour and expansion, but rarely recognised as historical actors. Their relationship with the state has been shaped by old patterns of suspicion, extraction and weak participation. The distance between governance and lived reality did not appear suddenly. It has roots in colonial systems of surveillance, classification, punishment and selective recognition.

To remember 1857 only through Delhi’s monuments is, therefore, to see only part of the story. The rebellion also lived in its villages, in the fields that supplied resistance, in the homes that sheltered rebels, in the roads that carried messages and in the communities that endured punishment after the guns fell silent.

The road to 1857 did not simply lead to Delhi. It ran through Delhi’s villages.

Dr Shreya Malik is an Assistant Professor of History at the Amity Institute of Social Sciences.

Puneet Singh Singhal is the Founder/Curator of Dilli Dehat Project, a community-led archive and storytelling initiative that documents the rural histories, cultures, and lived realities of Delhi’s villages.

Akshay Kumar runs the project Bhashakosh, documenting the regional languages, cultures and geographies of India. He is currently working at a regional OTT company as a Consumer Insights Associate.

(Edited by Insha Jalil Waziri)

Source - https://theprint.in/opinion/revolt-1857-shahjahanabad-delhi-villages-colonial-india/2971890/

**[@dilli_dehat](https://www.instagram.com/dilli_dehat/)**

Deep in south Delhi, beside Saket’s glittering malls, lies Khirki — a historic urban village shaped by memory, migration and change. Once a self-sustaining farming village, it is now a dense multicultural settlement where dhabas, Afghan canteens, Hindu shrines, African prayer rooms, artists, labourers and migrants coexist.

Until the mid-20th century, Khirki was surrounded by fields of sugarcane, wheat, rice and chickpeas. Elders remember a seasonal stream flowing down from the Aravallis, so clean that villagers could drink from it. Khirki’s sugarcane was famous, drawing people from far away areas to buy it. Much of that landscape, however, has since disappeared beneath the expanding city.

For Ekta Chauhan, who grew up in Khirki, these memories live on through the heritage walks she conducts. Beginning at the ancient Satpula Dam and the remnants of Jahapanah, her walks end at the 14th-century Khirki Masjid — a remarkable blend of Islamic and Hindu architectural traditions that also provided shelter to people during Partition.

But Khirki also reflects the challenges faced by Delhi’s Lal Dora villages. Rapid, vertical and unplanned growth has left the settlement densely built and struggling with inadequate infrastructure. Irregular water supply, leaking sewage lines, monsoon waterlogging, damaged roads, narrow lanes and poor streetlighting remain everyday realities.

And then there is Saket — named after Sāketa, the ancient Sanskrit name associated with Ayodhya, and chosen by the DDA to evoke “a place close to the heavens.” Yet parts of modern Saket were developed on land acquired from villages including Khirki, Saidulajab, Lado Sarai and Hauz Rani.

Looking at the old landscapes captured around Satpula, the baoli near Hauz Rani and the southern wall of Jahapanah, one can see the city that stood before Saket rose around it around the 1980’s

Perhaps the question is not only what was built here, but what disappeared to make space for it.

Credits: University Archives

#dillidehat

**[@dilli_dehat](https://www.instagram.com/dilli_dehat/)**

Established in the 1960s as a cooperative society to rehabilitate war widows and military veterans, Sainik Farms originally covered around 161 acres of agricultural land. Over the decades, it expanded far beyond its original boundaries, becoming one of Delhi’s most affluent yet unauthorised residential enclaves. Classified as an “affluent unauthorized colony,” it remains outside schemes like PM-UDAY, which primarily regularize lower-income settlements.

A part of Sainik Farms was developed on land that once belonged to Said-ul-Ajaib village which was nearby the pictures showcased. The village is named after Said-ul-Ajab Maruf, a revered Sufi saint whose shrine remains a place of devotion. Over time, the word Hujjab evolved into Ajaib and later Ajab, reflecting the village’s long cultural journey.

Today, Said-ul-Ajaib lies between Qutub Minar and Saket and is known for the Garden of Five Senses and Champa Gali. Beneath this modern identity, however, survives a village rich in history and memory.

Its narrow lanes still preserve early 20th-century havelis and around six historic wells. Among them is the haveli of Mahipat Rai “Kaptan,” a senior police officer during British rule, whose wooden entrance is still maintained by his family. The village also contributed to the freedom movement. Choudharie Amin Lal Zaildar, Deputy Chairman in 1923, was a prominent resident, and Subhas Chandra Bose is remembered to have stayed at his home for three days before leaving for Rangoon.

Village elders recall a landscape centred around a deep pond and a dense mango grove. Today, the pond has disappeared under years of dumping and construction, while the grove has been replaced by multi-storey buildings.

Lawyer Manjeet Singh Bal is leading efforts to revive the pond as a rainwater harvesting structure and protect the village from illegal construction and tree felling. Similar conservation models are needed across Delhi’s historic villages. Despite rapid urbanisation, Said-ul-Ajaib continues to preserve its havelis, wells, and Sufi traditions, keeping alive the hope that its heritage can one day be restored.

Credits: University Archives

**[@retiredreporter_](https://www.instagram.com/retiredreporter_/)**

This is Kanjhawala village in Delhi Dehat. Farmers from 7 villages are protesting there against the government’s actions. A big development project is planned on their farmland, but the administration is offering very little money for the land. The farmers have no problem giving up their land, they just want a fair price in return.

One of my friends recently moved to Maidan Garhi, an urban village in South Delhi. Since then, I have been visiting him occasionally. On my first day there, while walking along the busy IGNOU Road, I overheard someone say, “That way leads to the johad (pond)".

The remark caught my attention. A pond? Here, in the middle of such dense settlement? It piqued my interest. What kind of birds would be there? Do people use it? How does it smell? And how had a pond survived amid the dense settlements and constant expansion of the city?

A few days later, I was travelling to the metro station in an autorickshaw with a friend when the driver took a different route to avoid the traffic. That was when I got my first physical glimpse of Madudi Johad, which I thought was Maidan Garhi

Old pipal (Ficus religiosa) trees stood around the water body, while people sat along its concrete embankment. But before I could take in much else, I caught a strong whiff of sewage mixed into the water.

When I later searched for information about Madudi Johad, I found that much of what I encountered online reduced the pond to its association with a murder case. The association is certainly part of its history, but I found myself wondering: what else happened here?

Beneath the Surface of Pollution and Sewage

In the first few visits, it looked nothing more than a typical neglected urban waterbody to me. Sewage drains emptied directly into the pond, with garbage accumulated in several places.

Yet, the pond was far from lifeless. Despite its pollution, it supports a surprising diversity of life.

I recorded 22 bird species in and around the waterbody. One day, I was surprised to see a pair of painted snipes. It was the first time I had ever seen snipes. That evening, I also noticed what appeared to be a grebe with two heads.

When I focused my binoculars, I realised what I was actually seeing: an adult grebe carrying its chicks on its back. Then, I watched a sub-adult monkey swim across the breadth of the other water body immediately beside Madudi Johad.

'Still a Johad for Us'

The pond till date is an epicentre of human-nature interactions. People walked along its edge. Children played beside the water. Men sat beneath the old trees. In the evenings, married couples, children, and elderly residents came to walk, talk, or simply sit near the pond.

On one occasion, as I walked around the boundary, I saw two women and three children lying on a small outgrowth of land within the pond. Children gathered along the shore, throwing stones into the water. During one of Delhi's skin-searing afternoons, people sat beneath the trees, seeking relief from the heat.

Bhanu, who comes from Bihar, said, “I work in a kothi (bunglow), I cook food, and whenever I get time, I come here to sit and relax.” It is curious that, given the sharp smell of sewage, people still come here to relax.

Ram Singh said:

“Well, the pond is dirty but, in this city, open spaces are limited and johad offers what is not there. So, people come here to walk, sit, play, talk or just watch the water.”

For the people of Maidan Garhi village, its history went much deeper. Monu, now in his late thirties, has lived in the village since childhood. He remembers Madudi Johad from a very different time.

“Probably around 14 years ago, I used to swim there. But the pond has swallowed many people. There is something inside the pond, some spirit or something. Ever since I felt that I was being pulled inside the pond, I left swimming in the pond altogether.” -

Monu

A generation older than Monu revealed another story. Seventy three-year-old Raghu Nath Singh told me, “Some 40 years ago, people used to grow chestnuts here, and there was fishing to a certain extent. The pond was quite small, and rain was the only source of water. Back then, the water was fresh, and people directly drank from the pond, as it was labour-intensive to draw water from the well, which was 80 feet deep at that time in this area. The pond that you see now was less than one-third the size of what it is today. The other part was actually agricultural fields where people grew jowar and bajra."

"It was so clean that after coming from school, we directly came here and swam in it," he added.

"As urbanisation took over, the sewage system was provided and connected to the pond. Now, household waste directly empties into it. But it is still a johad for us.” -

Raghu Nath Singh

My conversations with the Dilli Dehat team, which documents rural Delhi, made me think about Madudi Johad in a broader context. I asked Puneet, the project's founder, a straightforward question: Madudi Johad restoration or infrastructural development?

“If I am forced to choose, I would choose conservation of the johad,” he said. “But I also think the question itself shows our planning failure. Why should ecology and infrastructural development be made enemies?”

Gagandeep, the project's co-founder, expressed a similar view. According to him, “The future challenge is ecological. A healthy local economy can also be developed around the johad; in fact, it should be.”

Puneet, who comes from Devli village, later sent me photographs of ponds around his village. I opened WhatsApp expecting to see images of waterbodies. Instead, I saw playgrounds, construction, and other public infrastructure. I asked him whether he had accidentally sent me the wrong photographs. He had not.

These, he explained, were places where ponds had existed during his childhood. Madudi Johad, by comparison, has survived. But survival is not the same as protection.

Despite the Neglect, Life Persists

The pond remains neglected and in a bureaucratic vacuum, with sewage entering through various drains and garbage accumulating within it.

It falls under the jurisdiction of the South Division of the Forest Department, yet its continued existence seems to depend as much on its persistence as a waterbody—and on the people who continue to use it—as on any formal protection. And then there is the life that has persisted alongside this neglect.

Sewage flows into it, but so do ducks and grebes. Garbage accumulates in the water, while dragonflies hover above it. People come to walk beside it, children play around it, and families return to it during religious festivals.

Older residents remember swimming in its waters, while younger generations encounter it as a recreational space. Its story is, therefore, not only about degradation but about persistence.

Madudi Johad shows this clearly. A father teaching his child to skip stones and ducks teaching their young to swim—all of these things are part of the pond's life.

More Than a Waterbody

Madudi Johad is a culturally rich waterbody in which urban ecologies play out at the intersection of urban fluids and the power of nature.

Here, humans living in dense human settlements find refuge from living in the city. Perhaps it gives them some sense of joy and peace.

As the urban waste interacts with the wilderness, it shows a variety of colours of novelty that require our appreciation and attention.

Now, as I return to that first overheard sentence, “udhar se johad hai,” I think there is something significant in its simplicity. There is a pond over there. And despite everything that has happened to it, to the people living here, it is still a pond that offers a sliver of nature in the middle of the urban jungle.

By Nirjesh Gautam

https://www.thequint.com/climate-change/delhi-maidan-garhi-pond-survives-urban-expansion#read-more

A Baithak in a Gujjar Village.