Urban lakes in India have come full cycle from being wisely used historically to being misused and abused in the modern world. Their value in society has changed over their lifecycle from rainwater to wastewater harvesting. It is important to understand the value of the lakes and ponds over their long and recent history should we wish to reuse them in the rising water distress due to climate change, urbanisation and poor water governance. I’ve been learning, loving and living the lakes and ponds of India for over two decades. Through regular ‘Walk the Lake, Talk the Lake’ events, I try to connect students, local people and officials with the various aspects of a lake to encourage them to be emphatic and enthusiastic about these beautiful waterbodies also known as the ‘Eyes of the Earth’. In this essay, I share the life of urban lakes in India as narrated during the ‘Walk the Lake, Talk the Lake’ with reference to the city of Ahmedabad.
Distant history
India’s tropical climate with long summers pushed people in ancient times to learn the art and engineering of harvesting rainwater by constructing small and large reservoirs as lakes, ponds and tanks on flowing rivers or depression areas of the landscape in order to store water for longer periods. These waterbodies formed a collective milieu of micro watersheds interconnected with one another making a macro watershed of the river in the region. The urban and rural settlements in India are spatially dotted with an ensemble of these waterbodies.
These historical waterbodies served the local communities for centuries as a lifeline for various water utilities
The first ever mention of rainwater harvesting was in the Vedic literature of Chandogya in the Upanishad. The waterbodies are known by different names based on size, shape, construction method, community and local dialects. For example, Sar/Sarovar (Sanskrit word for shallow lakes), Jheel/Tal (for large and deep natural lakes), Kund/Pokhar/ Pukur (for small ponds), Talaab/Talao (for small natural or manmade ponds), Bawri/Bavdi (for small shallow man-made ponds) and Sagar and Samand (for large and deep man-made lakes). The Britishers brought the words, Lake, Pond and Tank, which are now used for official purposes.
These historical waterbodies served the local communities for centuries as a lifeline for various water utilities. This was made possible by the collective efforts of those who resided around them. To ensure efficient use of the water, they designed formal and informal rules for individual/collective water share, clear/effective water use, sanctions for misuse/abuse and crisis/conflict resolution mechanism besides shared responsibility towards protection of their waterbody. The utilitarian purposes had ritualistic shades through social-cultural-religious events embedded with the climatic and farming patterns. For example, plays during full tank in the monsoon, prayers during the lowest water level and celebrations before sowing and after harvesting (the Diwali/Holi festival). Most waterbodies were considered sacred with rituals associated from the birth to the death of people. Parts of the lakefronts thus were public places housing the social-cultural-religious buildings for year-round activities, local markets for economic transaction and transit points to travel outside and into the village. Later, the lakefronts were also flanked by administration buildings. The traditional wisdom of community water management that sustained for centuries is referred to as the Golden Period of water management in India. During that period, the current city limits of Ahmedabad must have housed 1000+ lakes, ponds and tanks.
Bottom: At Rancharda Lake with Students of SAL School of Architecture
Recent history
Around the mid-20th century, the emerging industrialisation and urbanisation showed explicit preference for large water infrastructures like dams, canals and centralised water supply systems. Cities and towns were envisaged with water supply at the doorsteps. The management of large-scale water systems, called infrastructure, naturally shifted to the governmental bodies. Simultaneously, the implicit passiveness towards lakes, ponds and tanks was evident from the remote administration and ownership under the District Collector as a representative of the Central Government’s Ministry of Environment and Forests.
Meanwhile, the urban local bodies took up the planning and development of the cities based on the land-use. On the one hand, the existing historical water systems got excluded from integration with the urban developments due to the adminitstrative hiccups and, on the other hand, they were under severe pressure of urbanisation due to physical proximity of the developments.
The centralised water supply system with its limited water supply gave rise to the construction of borewells/tubewells in large numbers as alternate sources of water resulting in large amounts of groundwater extraction. These physical and administrative changes brought about behavioural changes in the society. The government perceived themselves as providers responsible for the maintenance of the waterbodies and their services, and the urban community perceived themselves as the users of the water services. In addition, since cities were made up of migrants who had little to do with waterbodies directly or indirectly, the urban community developed a hostile relationship with the historic waterbodies. The decades of urbanisation led to the transformation (loss) of several lakes, ponds and tanks into land for development and the remaining waterbodies, now referred to as Urban Lakes, are under severe stress to be developed. Several of the urban lakes became the optimal (and official) destinations for the disposal of wastewater and solid waste generated by the city, while many of them turned into squatting land for poor migrants who couldn’t afford housing.
By the end of the century, when the number and size of Indian cities had doubled, the total number of urban lakes decreased to less than half and the remaining ones were reduced to less than half their original size. There was immense misuse of these waterbodies. I recall that during my Post Graduate Thesis in Urban Design in 1998-99 on Urban Lakes as Potential Public Open Spaces at CEPT (now University), Ahmedabad recorded 600+ lakes. Among those, only Kankaria Lake and Sarkhej Roza Tank had the image of a public open space because of their lineage of architectural history. The remaining lakes were merely cesspools. I also remember that after heavy rainfall in the year 2000 when the city was submerged in water (and wastewater) for days and the lakes in the city were not filled, the urban community and the urban local bodies finally woke up to talking about city planning having missed the integration of the historical water systems. Also, ‘water matters’ started appearing in the cities with signs of water shortage and depleting groundwater levels. Urban lakes were finally at the centre of the city’s development schemes.
Explicit intentions to solve the water problem and save the lakes are crucial
Today
At the start of this century, amidst a plethora of policies – including the National Wetland Conservation Programme (NWCP) – that weren’t so effective for urban lakes, the National Lake Conservation Plan (NLCP) was initiated by the Ministry of Environment and Forests, as a first policy dedicated to the conservation and management of urban lakes. The NLCP (2004-14) guidelines, based on the Integrated Lake Basin Management approach, aimed to provide technical and financial assistance to the urban local bodies to restore urban lakes. Simultaneously, the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) initiated by the Ministry of Urban Development took up the integration of urban lakes with the urban infrastructure development and City Development Plans were prepared accordingly.
The designation and delineation of the lakes became the starting point to be followed with restoration. However, there was a catch! For example, during my PhD Thesis in Public Administration at Erasmus University, Rotterdam, from 2009 on ‘Governance and Sustainability of Urban Lakes in India from a Social-Ecological System Approach’, I found that Ahmedabad designated merely 100+ lakes post the NLCP. Further, the lake development model was inclined towards real estate and recreational developments, which led to reduction of the actual water spread area since the delineation of the lake area included the lakefront developments. Large portions of the lakefronts are reclaimed for developing recreational facilities, thus considering the lakes merely as gardens.
For example, the Vastrapur Lake Development became a model for Ahmedabad’s lake developments and the Kankaria Lake Redevelopment is now adopted as a model across the country. The disposal of wastewater into the lakes is institutionalised with a condition of wastewater being treated. However, several wastewater treatment systems are yet to be installed and those installed are partially/fully dysfunctional resulting in continuation of lake pollution. Further, with the introduction of ‘pay and use’ for entering the lake premises and using the recreational facilities like boating and food bazaars, the new lake development models cemented the idea of lakes as goods and services. By and large, this approach of lake reuse got political and societal approval. In this period, an Interlinking of Lakes project was modelled at 13 lakes in Ahmedabad by connecting them through underground drainage. But the initative was challenged by the dependence of water from external sources and lack of maintenance. While water distresses continue to rise, the NLCP and NWCP were merged in 2013 to form the National Plan for Conservation of Aquatic Ecosystems (NPCA). However, the lake restoration initiatives came to a halt.
Climate change as a national discourse for action emerged merely five years ago in India. The climate induced water distresses have become more noticeable in the form of frequent floods and droughts augmented with asymmetric access and distribution of water services between the class and caste divisions of the society. The Ministry of Environment and Forests was recently expanded to include Climate Change, which along with the Ministry of Water Resources and Ministry of Urban Development, has reinitiated lake activities through schemes such as, Sujalam Sufalam, Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) and Atal Bhujal Yojna. The reuse of urban lakes is targeted to recharge the groundwater and to recreate public spaces for recreation leaving the restoration of the lake ecosystem compromised as before.
Large portions of the lakefronts are reclaimed for developing recreational facilities, thus considering the lakes merely as gardens
For tomorrow
The rising water distresses reflect the poor state of water governance. The governmental approach of ad hoc policy decisions on the existing lakes (and rivers) augmented with impetus on building large water infrastructures needs discussion. The political economy of ‘Business as Usual’ endorsed by the planners, urban designers, architects and engineers is unfortunate. Plus, the abundance of scientific and technical knowledge available on the various aspects of the lakes tells us that restoring lakes does not require rocket science. What is required is a consented conscience, contested science and a lot of common sense as briefly discussed here.
Explicit intentions to solve the water problem and save the lakes are crucial. We must acknowledge lakes as complex social-ecological systems with high societal value that changes over time. We must learn to harness complexity. Collective actions complemented with awareness and awakening are a must. Polycentric governance blurring the institutional prerogatives is necessary, which requires a multidisciplinary approach where planners, urban designers, architects and engineers must agree/learn to work with hydrologists, limnologists, biologists, ornithologists, ichthyologists, chemists and other allied experts. Local wisdom and participation of the local community in the decision making must move beyond tokenism by making government/consultants’ actions more inclusive. The local community must ask the right questions and take part in the process.
Lake Development must shift to Lake Conservation in the policy forum and on the professional boards, since the concerns of the lake and the consequences of the two approaches are fundamentally different. A fair cost-benefit analysis of the ecosystem services drawn from a lake will show that lake development may provide more short-term gains, but lake conservation offers sustained long-term gains and is more likely to embrace development than the other way around. We must expand our mindset from revival of the lakes for groundwater recharge and lands for development, since lakes have the capacity to offer more such as flood control, biodiversity nourishment, microclimate and, importantly, human wellbeing. Focus on the lake ecosystem and biodiversity must be prima facie. The life of/in the lake is as important as its water is for the people. Each lake has a typical ecosystem like DNA characterised by its origin, shape, depth, area, soil composition, tropic state, location, limnology and several other social-ecological characteristics which must be considered to prepare a tailor-made action plan for ecosystem restoration of the lake. We must stop seeing lakes as means of recreation and real estate development. Learning from the socialecological interactions of the lake restoration models is important to improvise.
A way forward
As we plan for sustainable cities for tomorrow, a simple question to be asked is, why is Ahmedabad with 100+ lakes (and a river) dependent for its water needs on a dam (Dharoi) located 70 kilometres away, deep borewells and a canal (Narmada) that brings water from as far as 1500 kilometres from a place that already suffers from water shortages? Unless we ask this question of water ethics for water sharing, we are not looking for the right solutions. At the core, since a lake is an engineered ecosystem by the people, the dependence on lakes is crucial to long-term sustenance as well as a water resilient future. ‘Walk the Lake, Talk the Lake’ is an effort to bring some of the behavioural changes towards consumption and production of water along with a sense of association and belongingness with the waterbodies.
All photos: Mansee Bal Bhargava
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