This is the first of a two-part series on the ecology of Gurgaon.
The fate of the Najafgarh Jheel, a lake that once spanned 220 square kilometres on the Delhi-Haryana border and is still home to thousands of wetland birds, and the Aravallis Hills, one of the world’s oldest mountain ranges that are described as the ‘green lungs’ of the National Capital Region (NCR), will be sealed on July 30 and 31, 2024, respectively.
Both these ecosystems are vital for people living in the National Capital Region. They play a crucial role in rejuvenating the area’s rapidly declining and heavily-extracted groundwater resources. The value of these ecosystems is hard to miss, and yet, their future now hangs by a thread. Or two court cases, rather. On these dates, the National Green Tribunal India’s (apex green court) and the Supreme Court will hear cases that will have enormous consequences for the recognition, protection and conservation of these two ecosystems.
This two-part essay focuses on the delays and obstructions that prevent state authorities from taking the right steps to protect these vital ecological sites.
In this part we discuss the Najafgarh Jheel, a well-documented large waterbody that traverses the state boundaries of Haryana and Delhi, but Haryana state authorities refuse to notify it and restore it. According to them, it is not a ‘naturally’ occurring wetland and most of it lies in Delhi. The Aravalli hills, one of the world’s oldest mountain ranges that are described as the ‘green lungs’ of the National Capital Region (NCR), are also caught in comparable labyrinthine legalese and administrative foot-dragging, as we will show in part two.
The lingering confusion about definitions and boundaries is not just a unique cartographical conundrum, it offers a critical vantage point from which to evaluate how, amid rampant urban expansion, these ecologies crucial for the entire National Capital Region are kept mired in administrative and legal obfuscations. For instance, the Ghata Jheel, a lake in Ghata village that once covered approximately 300 acres has recently ‘disappeared.’ The Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority in its recent report on the state bodies of water in Gurgaon notes, “there is no government/public owned waterbody upstream of the Ghata bundh [embankment] which could be defined as ‘Ghata Jheel or Ghata Lake.’”
Despite the lip service to Smart and Green Cities, ground-truthing exercises, creating inventories of ponds, and planning biodiversity parks, we show that the politics of erasures and effacements of ecologies slow down and derail the process of protecting and restoring these ecosystems.
Obfuscating regional ecologies, we suggest, is efficacious on multiple counts. Confusions and ambiguities not only provide wiggle room for grabbing land and water and converting them into high-value real estate, but subtly or not, they also work to erode and devalue embedded rural-agrarian relationships with land, forest, water, and cattle. They open up the possibilities, as we show in the second part, for designing new natures that are commonly considered good, desirable, civilised, and urbane (read green/clean/parks/morning walks/yoga/elite) while delineating them from bad, rustic, rural, agro-pastoral, and undesirable (read brown/rocky/semi-arid). Such entrepreneurial new natures, often funded by Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) grants, deploy eco-friendly tools and green rhetoric to create pockets and parcels of ecological retreats, but they tend to dilute and even divert the core social-environmental questions that are intimately connected to agrarian livelihoods, land tenure, ecological equity, and long-term sustainability, especially in this political ecological conjuncture of climate change.
Proposed layout of the upcoming ‘Antalya Hills’ and Golf Hills’ projects in Sector 79, Gurgaon. Photo: Gururani.
Instead of finding loopholes and ignoring the Supreme Court’s verdict and numerous progressive conservation acts that provide a sound legal framework, the Haryana government must prioritise protecting the region’s ecosystem. It must revisit its stance and embrace a long-term transformative ecological vision that centres on collaboration with environmental experts and rural residents to protect the Najafgarh Jheel, along with other water bodies and the Aravallis, without any further delay.
Najafgarh Jheel: Land in waiting?
The much-awaited date of April 25, 2024, has come and gone. This was the date when the National Green Tribunal (NGT) was expecting to hear from the Haryana government about their plans to notify the Najafgarh Jheel as a wetland. July 30, 2024, is now the new date to present a plan for the Najafgarh Jheel. The Supreme Court will hear the Aravalli case on the unified definition on July 31, 2024.
An aerial view of Najafgarh Jheel. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Najafgarh Jheel is one of the largest water bodies in the region, according to the INTACH report of 2018. It serves as an important hydrological confluence, receiving water from several small rivers, creeks, and drains, including the once mighty Sahibi River. According to the INTACH report, “Najafgarh Jheel is first noted in the Antique SOI Map of 1807. This marvelous asset had a spread of 88 sq. miles [220 sq.km.] as per Delhi Gazetteer of 1883. It was fed by runoff from Gurgaon and the Sahibi Nadi as well as from Rewari, Jhajjar and northwest Delhi… In the floods of 1958, the Jheel assumed a spread of 145 sq.km., in 1964 floods a spread of 240 sq.km.”
In 1960, its waterspread stretched over 24,000 hectares, but currently, it is reduced to 2,530 hectares, of which 1,400 hectares are in Delhi and 1,130 hectares in Haryana (Delhi Environment Management Plan 2020:2).
Despite its diminution, it remains an important ecological landmark with rich biodiversity and a thriving bird sanctuary. It serves as a natural buffer for floods, treats wastewater, and is central to maintaining the livelihoods of farmers and fishers in the surrounding villages. In short, it is essential for sustaining and recharging the growing water needs of an expanding urban landscape.
The floods of 1964 and 1977 were the two key turning points that changed the fate of the Sahibi and the Najafgarh Jheel. In 1977, the Najafgarh Nallah was significantly widened, and the wetland was gradually drained. As the submergence area of the Jheel reduced, the dried-up land was intruded upon, and local villagers started to plant crops and vegetables in it. However, over the last thirty years, with the expansion of Gurgaon city, the inflow of its wastewater into the Najafgarh Jheel have turned the Jheel into one of the most polluted sludges in the NCR (Bhatnagar, personal communication, June 8, 2024).
In 2014, the Indian National Trust for Arts and Cultural Heritage (INTACH), a Delhi-based environmental NGO, filed a petition with the NGT, urging the Tribunal to notify Najafgarh Jheel as a lake following the guidelines in the Wetland (Conservation and Management) Rules 2010, and prohibit encroachment of any kind, disposal of waste and discharge of untreated effluents in the water body and prevent its deterioration. The Wetland Rules that came into force in 2010 provided an internationally accepted definition of a wetland that included man-made or natural, saline or freshwater, coastal or inland, and permanent or temporary. The rules were modified in 2017.
INTACH succeeded in getting the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) to declare the submergence area as Zone L in the land use plan, in which 356 hectares or 3.56 square kilometres were marked as the area of the Jheel on the Delhi side. (Bhatnagar interview, June 8, 2024).
The story, however, is different on the Haryana side. The state authorities continue to argue that there is no ‘naturally’ occurring waterbody on their side of the border, and hence they cannot notify it as such. They have drawn on a range of evidence – from the colonial gazetteers, Delhi Gazetteers 1912, and Gurgaon 1887-1883; Survey of India 1972 and 1976 toposheets, and maps, revenue records – to claim that the majority of the submergence area of the Jheel lies in Delhi and urged the Tribunal to review its recommendations.
According to them, since the construction of the check dams on the Sahibi River in 1964, the submergence area has, in fact, shrunk over the past few decades, and what is being identified as a lake is, in fact, a privately owned depression, and private lands cannot be notified as wetland. They argue the increase in submergence area from 25 square kilometres in 1990 to 350 square kilometers in 2022 is due to inadequate infrastructure, which has not kept up with rapid urban expansion, resulting in excessive wastewater flowing into the depression.
Survey of India (SoI) Map 1807 presented by INTACH to show the undisputable presence of Sahibi River, Najafgarh Jheel and Yamuna River. Photo: Survey of India.
Ritu Rao, a research scholar at TERI University, and INTACH, have presented historical and topological evidence that contradict the claims of the Haryana government. Manu Bhatnagar, the Principal Director of the Natural Heritage Division at INTACH, in an interview, showed us extensive records they have kept, including the 1807 toposheet (above) and satellite images from the 1950s, to track the extent of the lake’s submergence area (personal communication June 8, 2024). Yet, Haryana state authorities are willing to identify only 100 acres of land which is owned by the Panchayat and notify it as a water body.
In 2017, the NGT directed Haryana state authorities to come up with a definition of a lake. Haryana state authorities subsequently agreed that Najafgarh Jheel qualifies as a lake and they would start the process of notifying and preserving it. The case was then closed. However, for two years, there was no action, and INTACH had no choice but to return to the Tribunal. Shortly after, in March 2020, the Wetland Authority of Delhi put together an Environment Management Plan for the Jheel, and Haryana filed theirs on September 27, 2020. Both plans were put together, and an Integrated Environment Management Plan was submitted to the Green Tribunal on December 13, 2021. In January 2022, the NGT gave a favorable order to enforce the Integrated Environment Management Plan (2021), but just two days later, Haryana claimed that there were technical issues in estimating the extent of the lake. The case was referred to the recently created inter-ministerial committee, but Haryana has continued to once again drag its feet and has put the implementation of the Integrated Environmental Management Plan on hold.
INTACH filed yet another application with the NGT, and this time, the NGT gave a wishy-washy order, which put no pressure on Haryana to perform. It is unclear if there were any external pressures in play, but one can only speculate in the context of soaring land prices, the real estate lobby that has had its eye on this piece of the basin may have dug deep into its pocket to ensure that the submergence area is not declared a lake.
Map showing Najafgarh Jheel boundary and zone of influence presented in the Integrated Environmental Management Plan (2021). Photo: Wetland International.
Haryana state authorities have instead proceeded to construct a 6-kilometre embankment, which will restrict the flow of wastewater into the Jheel. The proposal to construct this embankment has been controversial, to say the least. Bhatnagar, among others, is critical of the embankment as he argues that it would be hydrologically destructive for Gurgaon. According to the National Center for Seismology of India, this region also falls within seismic zone 4, which has the highest susceptibility to soil liquefaction and can experience earthquakes measuring up to a magnitude of 8 on the Richter scale. If that were to happen, the destruction would be unimaginable.
INTACH has instead proposed a range of alternatives to develop the region and ensure biodiversity and ecological sustainability (see INTACH 2018 report for recommendations). In July 2023, INTACH approached the Supreme Court, and the issue now rests with the NGT, which has asked Haryana to provide a timeline by July 30, 2024, to notify the Jheel as a wetland and ensure its legal protection.
The risks of not notifying the Najafgarh Jheel as a water body are far too high. In a state where water-table depletion is a serious concern and in just the past five years, there has been an overall 19% decline in aquifers, vacillating over boundaries and definitions of vital wetlands and not protecting them will be nothing short of catastrophic. In response to the Central Ground Water Authority (CGWA) report that pointed out that 75% of groundwater resources in Haryana are either ‘overexploited’ or are in critical condition, Haryana state authorities have taken steps to identify and conserve 18,000 ponds and develop an action plan to restore them. The Haryana Pond and Waste Water Management Authority, established in 2018, is responsible for giving unique identification (UID) numbers to water bodies and restoring them. As of June 18, 2024, UIDs have been assigned to 17,938 ponds under the panchayat and 824 under urban local bodies with an area greater than 0.5 acres.
Additionally, several studies conducted by public and private organisations have also stressed the need to revive the traditional water systems of ponds, drains, and lakes, which supplemented the city’s water needs and formed an integral part of its natural drainage system. If smaller ponds and water bodies can be given IDs and protected, why can Najafgarh Jheel not be notified and earmarked for urgent restoration?
‘The trouble with nature’
As real estate-led urbanization engulfs agrarian hinterlands, forests, wetlands, hills, and pastures, there is no denying that we stand at the precipice of colossal human-ecological transformation. In this context, the ongoing confusion about the Jheel and the Haryana government’s insistence on recognizing and protecting only ‘naturally’ occurring water bodies urges us to ask what qualifies as ‘natural.’ What is the conception of nature that guides the state’s vision? In academic scholarship, the idea of a pure, pristine, untouched nature that has existed outside of social/human relations has been challenged for several years now.
In 1995, the famous American environmental historian William Cronon described this vision of untouched nature as troubling and traced it back to the moment of European colonisation of the Americas that led to massive social and ecological destruction. There is widespread recognition that the domains we identify as ‘society’ and ‘nature’ are not distinct; rather, material, ecological, political, spatial, and historical factors shape how society and nature produce each other. In a heavily engineered landscape such as that of Haryana, formerly colonial Punjab, where the flow of water has been channeled and rechanneled over centuries, is there any water body that has not been touched by human intervention? Whose version of history, record, or memory will the state adopt, how and why? Whose vision of nature will prevail, and who will be included in the process of decision-making and who will be left out?
The 2017 Wetland Rules do not differentiate between natural or manmade water bodies, and Haryana’s insistence on protecting only those that are ‘natural’ defies the Wetland Rules. Importantly, the Delhi government in the Zone L of the Masterplan of National Capital Territory (NCT) has designated 356 ha (890 acres) as Najafgarh Jheel. It has prioritised the revival of the wetland in the first phase of the state’s plan and also set a goal of restoring 1,000 lakes and water bodies to meet international standards. There is now a Najafgarh Wetlands Committee, which has been constituted under the Wetland Authority of Delhi, that will assess and monitor the Najafgarh Jheel in Delhi.
View of the Najafgarh Jheel hosting several migratory birds. Photo: India Water Partnership.
If Haryana continues to ignore and obfuscate the boundaries of wetlands, it will only worsen the environmental woes. Big and small private developers and even individual farmers are not interested in environmental protection and restoration, and there is a shocking lack of engagement with the restoration of Najafgarh Jheel. It is up to the state authorities to demonstrate the will to protect and notify the Jheel as a wetland. There are planning and legal instruments available to do so, and we can only hope that the Haryana government will adopt a consultative approach and collaborate with smallholders, villagers, environmentalists, and citizen groups to bury the obfuscations and return to its 2017 admission to ensure Najafgarh Jheel’s viability and sustainability on July 30, 2024. Protecting and restoring the Najafgarh Jheel is not just a matter of concern for this region or this Jheel, but is integral to securing and sustaining the ecology of the entire National Capital Region.
Watch this space for part two of the series.
Shubhra Gururani teaches in the Department of Anthropology at York University, Canada.
Shruti Nikhar is an architect and researcher whose work focuses on climate resilience and environmental sustainability.
The research was supported by the SSHRC-Funded research project, Life and Death of Urban Nature in India.
