Jamna Kinaare Mora Sheher
The Yamuna’s floodplains in Delhi have been home to thousands of families, who have been living here for decades, and some of whom are farmers who have tilled and cultivated these lands into wonderfully rich and plentiful farms that feed the belly of the city. These floodplains are a source of home and livelihood to these families. However, these families have been branded as encroachers of these lands, a trivial hindrance to what could be a world class riverfront in the capital city of a global superpower. To pave the way for the Yamuna Riverfront Development Project, the state, through the Delhi Development Authority, has been conducting many eviction drives across the floodplains for over two decades now. This story documents the journeys of one such family, after the evictions took place.
Yamuna river, Delhi
Mohit’s family came to Delhi in 1996, from Badayun in Uttar Pradesh, in search of better livelihood opportunities and with the dream of a better lifestyle. They started living in the Yamuna floodplains, adjacent to Mayur Vihar, and piece by piece, their family built a home in Delhi.
A home in Delhi’s Yamuna floodplains
They rented 12 bigha of land (bigha is a local unit of measuring land, 5 bigha is roughly equal to 1 acre), and the entire family of 10 worked on this land. They grew vegetables like ghiya (bottle gourd), torai (ridge gourd), palak (spinach), bhindi (okra), etc. on their farm and inculcated various techniques into their farming practices such as permaculture and cropping in cycles, so that the land can be replenished.
Permaculture in practice in the farms of Yamuna Khadar in Delhi
They could readily sell their produce in the local mandi of Yamuna Khadar, where many street vendors who worked in the adjacent areas of Mayur Vihar and Nizamuddin could come and purchase the fresh produce in the morning. Or they could sell it at one of the larger Mandis (markets) of Azadpur, Ghazipur and Okhla.
A local Mandi (vegetable market) at Yamuna Khadar
They could also directly sell their produce on redis, (wheelbarrows) in the nearby residential neighborhoods of Mayur Vihar and Jangpura. Most of the families farming in the Yamuna Khadar would engage with some or all of these methods to sell their produce. They found a great market and many profitable channels, in close proximity to where they live.
Vegetables get sold to the homes of Delhi through a network of redis (vending carts) and shops.
Floods would sometimes destroy their crops and force them to move outside the area for a few days, but over the years they had learned to adapt to the nature of the river.
A quint file image of a flood in the Yamuna floodplains. Source The Quint
Their children went to the nearby government school and even attended the tuition classes set up in Yamuna Khadar by some local teachers and entrepreneurs, and were all set to be the first generation to complete an education in Mohit’s family.
The Yamuna Khadar School, which has ben recently demolished by the DDA.
The families would even come together to celebrate festivities like Chatt Pooja. Earlier, this used to happen on the Yamuna bank but because of heavy pollution of the waters and ban of chatt activities on the banks, the people started to dig these beautiful little pools in their farms, where they would all come together to celebrate and pray.
Farmers collectively washing their produce at a borewell.
The families would even come together to celebrate festivities like Chatt Pooja. Earlier, this used to happen on the Yamuna bank but because of heavy pollution of the waters and ban of chatt activities on the banks, the people started to dig these beautiful little pools in their farms, where they would all come together to celebrate and pray.
Chatt festivities at a farm in Yamuna Khadar. This festival is eagerly looked forward to by the farmers, most of whom have their roots in UP and Bihar.
One day, the DDA (Delhi Development Authority) turned up at the Yamuna Khadar, with a battalion of police and bulldozers. The bulldozers ran through Mohit’s field and demolished their homes. If anybody tried to talk to them, they would start beating people up and create a ruckus. In a bid to ensure that the families don’t inhabit the land again, they even break the borewells, which go as deep as 50 ft into the ground and are the only source of water for the fields.
A representation of the DDA and Delhi Police conducting an eviction in Delhi.
Within a moment, everything was destroyed. Their farms, their homes. And their lives that they had put together so carefully.
And what happened to the land? The forest department used it for compensatory afforestation. They destroyed a family’s home and source of livelihood so that they could plant some trees because they had to cut some trees elsewhere to build a highway or some other development related undertaking.
One can spot many such plantation drives by the Forest Department in the Yamuna flood.
The families whose homes and farms were lost to this eviction had to leave Yamuna Khadar. People went wherever they could. Some resettled themselves to Ghaziabad, Faridabad, Panipat, Gaur City, etc. Mohit’s family moved to Kulesara in Greater Noida.
These locations are very far from the city and disrupt the families’ access to education, livelihood and healthcare.
They found a parcel of land near the Hindon river. Mohit had to spend Rs. 70,000 for this resettlement. Around Rs. 15,000-20,000 went in building a jhuggi (hutment) for the family to live in, and the rest went in renting and setting up the fields. He was only able to rent 9 bigha of land, as it is more expensive to rent land in Kulesara than it was in Yamuna Khadar.
The farms of Kulesra.
Mohit and his family feel very disoriented here. They still go to Yamuna Khadar to purchase seeds, khaad (fertiliser) and such, because they do not know of any local vendors selling quality supplies. They don’t fully understand the mandi and sales network of the area. Kulesara doesn’t have the kind of residential market that Yamuna Khadar had, and even selling the produce on their own has been an uphill battle. So they have to rely on the middlemen at the mandi to sell their vegetables, who take a large cut of their profits.
Mohit and his family sorting and cleaning their produce at their farms. The markets of Kulesara offer far less profits than that of Mayur Vihar, Nizamuddin and Jangpura, where they used to sell their produce earlier.
Mohit’s children are not getting admission into the local schools because their Aadhar Card is from the Mayur Vihar area. The schools are only willing to give them admission if they get their Aadhar cards updated to reflect their Kulesara address.
It can be a while before they get their Aadhar updated, and until such a time their children cannot go to school.
They are new here. They haven’t been able to make friends and do not understand the area. There’s very little to do here. They had to leave their friends and community, spend a lot of money to resettle to the fringes of the city and are earning and saving far less than they could previously. The family is very distraught about the whole situation.
Piece by piece, the family is again building a home in Kulesra.
Not all who were evicted are in such bad shape. There’s a small colony in Kulesara where the slightly better off families of Yamuna Khadar, with more financial power, caste and class capital live. These families had already purchased plots of land in Kulesara, even before the eviction, and had built pakka (permanent) houses in the event there was an eviction, like what eventually happened in Yamuna Khadar. They had to sell the land they owned in their villages to be able to afford this. Their children too, are unable to get admission into the local schools because of the Aadhar card issue. Even they feel disoriented and deprived, but they seem to have somewhat more stability than Mohit.
A pakka home in Kulesara, belonging to of one of the better off farmers from Yamuna Khadar who has already built the home as a contingency for the eventual day that they get evicted from the floodplains.
As unfortunate as it is, Mohit’s story is not unique. Each of the evictions along the Yamuna, be it for the Golden Jubilee Park, or the Akshardham temple or for compensatory plantation drives, have been carried out with great apathy and violence, with no regard or adherence to any human rights conventions, and have left many of these families deeply scarred and disenfranchised.
Their homes and their livelihoods have been gnawed away from them, but the loss is not just limited to the material. The people have been looted of their community, collective memory and right to the city. Many of them have had to leave and resettle themselves on the fringes of the city. Delhi has managed to push many of them out, just close enough so that they can service the city while ogling at its glimmer and splendor, but far enough that they’ll be doing it from the outside.
About Tushar Kanoi
Tushar is an architect by training and his work largely revolves around urban development, planning and policy. He is particularly interested in the ‘Housing and Land Rights’ situation in India, and to this end is also working with Mahila Housing SEWA Trust. He moonlights as a printmaker and writer and has been exhibited across various platforms.
