Vol. 1: Looking back at what went so wrong, when and how
The intention of this write up is two-fold. Firstly, to revisit how it all went wrong. Secondly, I will lay out ideas to tackle the worsening problem of urbanisation in Nepal. What better option do we have than to talk about Kathmandu on this topic? However, the discussion here should be applicable to any urban area of Nepal.
Volume one would probably be a depressing exercise of looking back at how did we get it so wrong. Volume two will be forward looking and will offer some solutions.
Unlike a well-polished academic publication, readers will come across lot of raw emotions and first person account. I have on purpose chosen to retain the human element in this writing as this is a real-life story that is unfolding right before our eyes, literally. And of course, it is greatly opinionated.
The Himalayan Shangri-La
To consider options for solution, firstly we need to understand the problem. On that note, I will tell you a story to start with, albeit a depressing one. The description may sound fictional but they are based on my life experience. This actually happened, just in case you might wonder.Looking back, Kathmandu was a near utopia when I was growing up in the 1980s. Don’t think we need to add any qualifiers here to describe the Himalayan Shangri-La. This is self explanatory. I am afraid, I won’t be able to do justice by daring to express the feel of those times through written words. It almost feels like any description, no matter how hard I try, fails to capture the essence of growing up in Kathmandu in those gone years. Words are failing me here helplessly. I am feeling like getting lost in translation between my feelings and articulation of them in black and white. I will try anyway.
I grew up in Siphal, which is a tole (suburb) located adjacent to Hija Khusi. Hija Khusi is newari name for Dhobi Khola (translates to washermen river in English). Dhobi Khola is one of the eight rivers that originates in the mountains of the valley. The other rivers are Balkhu, Bishnumati, Tukucha, Bagmati, Manohara, Hanumante and Nakkhu. These eight river systems converge into a single Bagmati towards the central part of the valley and exists to the south through chovar galchhi. Now, you might call this utterly sentimental and find it so from previous millennium but I used to play and catch hile machhaa in Hija Khusi. This species of the pieces is a small fish that dwelled around muddy parts of the river in Hija Khusi.
Let me paint a more vivid picture for you so as to set the context. The water in Hija Khusi was so crystal clean you could see the sand grains rolling at its bed. You could see school of fish (including white bait and catfish) swim in water, as if you are looking into a giant fish bowl. There were even eels (locally known as baam machha), that my kakas (paternal uncles) used to catch ingeniously with help of a thread around its neck. I caught fish (small fish, not eels) in regularly with my cousins. Well, I didn’t catch them, literally. I held them after my brave cousins caught them by thrusting their hands under the nooks and corners of the river banks. These fish often reside under root system of the weeping willow that grew prolifically over the river banks. Our mums never had to buy those sagun machhas (dried small fish used for cultural offerings) during those days when we used to be the river fishermen.
Residents used to wash and farmers irrigated their crop with water from Hija Khusi. Yes, directly without any treatment. The water table was high enough for the river water to be pumped into the fields without much effort. One downside of the high water table in the river was that the monsoon flood often and regularly breached its banks. Flood water spilled over into the adjacent paddy fields after almost every heavy monsoon rain.
I was told by my parents and senior relatives that the water from Hija Khusi was used for drinking purpose until the late 1970s. This should hardly be a surprise if you have ever been to the origins of Hija Khusi in the catchments of Shivapuri mountains to the north of Kathmandu or if you have been to Sundarijal. The mountains and forest canopy of Sundarijal is the catchment area of Bagmati river. Water of all rivers of Kathmandu are still pristine, fit for drinking (with basic treatment), at their sources even to this day. Once the water leaves downstream from the catchments, and as it passes through civilisation, tragedy strikes. The pristine water gradually turns into an open, black and a stench of a thick slurry of sewer. How tragic is that? And we still call it Holy Bagmati. We worship our rivers, yet we shit on them everyday. How hypocritical is that?
The banks of Hija Khusi were rich biodiversity - both flora and fauna. Weeping willows branches not only kissed the river but their root systems also provided safe haven for the local fish. The young weeping willow branches also served as a tool to transport our catch. We would weave the fish like beads through the thread-like branch. Numerous species of birds such as barbet, fruit trees like chestnuts, and wild flowers lined its banks. Now and then, to our horror, we would see snakes as long as probably more than 3 meter long. The water loving swallow birds not only frolicked over the river water but they also frequently built their nest and raised their young ones on the wooden ceiling beams in our house every year.
The natural playground under the sky on the banks of the river
Hija Khusi was my playground. Back in those days, there were no electronic devices. Not even TV at our home even after Nepal Television was launched in January 1985. After Nepal TV came into the airwaves, my childhood friend Bikash and I used to go watch TV series such as “The Professionals” and “The Old Fox” at our another childhood friend Bikash’s home. Dad of this Bikash with TV was a CDO, that was all we knew back then. Bikash and I made sure we washed up our hands and feet before going into the TV room. I’m getting distracted here. That is what these devices do. But this is related to the river here because since we didn’t have anything much else to do, what did we do? We go down the river.Outdoors was our abode. We flew kites for countless hours on the open banks on either side of the river. Kiting went on until our eyes turned as red as ripe tomatoes and our skin peeled off from our wrists where the lattai came in contact with our wrist. We applied maajaa in our own and our friends’ dhaago (string). Maajaa recipe may at times contain live molluscs and broken down fluorescent tube lights.
As young children, we grew up in those river banks. We learned swear words. We learned about adult life. We learned secrets (often dark secrets) about our friends and parents and siblings we never know about. We learned about who was in love with who in our tole. We even learned why that guy sitting next to the mandir used to play flute every night so passionately for so long.
After every monsoon, the river would leave wide banks with sand so white, that reflection from it could blind you if you stare long enough at the sand without any eye protection. This was perfect because our long holidays of Dashain and min pachaas were after the monsoon season. Those sandy banks were our athletics arena. We raced, high-jumped, long-jumped, wrestled. You name it. We have had odd fist fights too in those sandy banks. Let me put it this way - those sandy banks were no less than combined stadium and colosseum for us. It was our arena for coming together, hanging out, playing, building camaraderie and what not.
On a more sinister side, Hija Khusi used to swing dance now and then every few years between Siphal (eastwards) side of the bank and Maali Gaun/Haadi Gaun (westewards) side of the bank. These two areas are about 200 meters apart Siphal to the east and the other to the west. The river used to break the banks, carve out the edges washing away significant size of paddy fields and whatever on its way. Once it washed a bridge and since then the place is known as Bhatkya Pool (broken bridge). We could hear the river roar while we slept at night. Our home was good more than 50 meters from the river. Once the monsoon deluge subsided, the devastation that was left back across the river would seem as if tide has just gone out to the sea from a sandy beach. It was the river cleansing it’s system, as if our excretory systems got rid of impurities from our body so often.
The beginning of the end - death by thousand cuts
Apparently, my brother Ramesh (kaka’s son) often used to boast about our Hija Khusi adventures with his son, Aniket. Aniket, a millennial, got so irritated by this incomprehensible story that Ramesh kept playing so often like a broken record, he apparently once said this to his dad, “baba, you are so dark because you played in that black river”. Well, Ramesh's completion is not as if coloured but he is a bit dark bronze, you see. Humour aside, how ironic is that in terms of the perception of the river to the new generation who did not see what it was like? I like to call this tragedy of the millennium.Fast forward one decade since my childhood and disaster struck. By the 1990s, numerous injuries were inflicted to the river, one blow at a time. We severed life out its soul, one cut a time. I do not wish to go anywhere near painting the horrible graphical account and the acrid stench from the open drain that Hija Khusi has turned into today. Today every time I go to Kathmandu and happen to pass over the river over Kalo Pool, something in me dies. Every time. Every single passage. I’m seriously saying this. I get goosebumps. I try not to look below but I can’t help. Then something in me dies. One more time. Every time. I got goosebumps even when I was writing this.
In the early eighties, while we were fishing in Hija Khusi, occasionally, and typically late afternoon, we would see pitch black water and we’d skirt out of the water until the water turned back to its normal colourless state. In hindsight, that blackening of the water was one of the first blows to the river’s gradual decline. Little did we realise back then that the black water was due to the wastewater being dumped to the river from the leather shoe factory. Bansbari chaalaa Jutta Karkhana (Bansbari Leather Shoe Factory) used to be located north east of Kathmandu, just outside the ring road on the way to Budhaniklantha. It is hardly a surprise that Hija Khusi flows about half a kilo meters south-east from the location of the factory which now houses the Sahid Gangalal National Health Center.
Late eighties and early nineties saw a rapid decline in the health and life of the rivers of the valley. Among the fatal blows, the brightly colourful azo dyes were one of the top culprits. These synthetic dyes were the nasty Carbon and Nitrogen based chemicals used to add colour to the wool that were being used to weave the hand-made carpet. Carpet industry back then was booming and mushroomed in literally every location within the valley and its nooks and corners. The industry was Nepal’s one of the top export dollar earners until the issue of child labour case shut down the industry beyond revival in mid nineties. Unfortunately, the unregulated and untreated direct dumping of the azo-laden filthy polluted water into our rivers sucked away life out of our rivers, including that from my beloved Hija Khusi. The water quality and biodiversity that used to thrive in Hija Khusi in the past was wiped off the face of the river by the mismanagement of a single reckless industry.
The second strike to the rivers’ decline, ironically, was the cost we paid in the name of freedom. The "wind of change from Berlin" gave us prajatantra (democracy) on the early morning of 8 April 1990 via a televised decree from then King Birendra. The newly achieved
our version of freedom was soon followed by haphazard and rushed economic liberalisation half-cooked by semi-trained economists from the US Universities. As a result of such misguided and confused policies and general migration pattern, a significant amount of activities occurred in the real estate market of the valley.
New houses, or rather “Bihari Boxes” started to pop up in the middle of paddy fields, literally everywhere. “Bihari Boxes” was aptly coined hybrid phrase invented after builders (dakarmis in the local vernacular) who came from Bihar of India and shape of the houses that they built that looked like match boxes. A new concept emerged in the name of “Baneshwore-isation” - the unregulated, unplanned and ruthlessly uncontrolled swift process by which the lush paddy fields in the locality known as Baneshwore vanished to give way to Bihari Boxes. Baneshwore is an area located adjacent to the west of the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu. Anecdotally, Baneshwore-isation, I was told, is taught as “what not to do” in terms of urban development in civil engineering courses in India. I have no evidence to corroborate this sad but ugly truth. But nevertheless it is a good example of the byproduct of our neglect, incompetence and myopic vision in regards to urban planning.
In the world of Baneshwore-isation and Bihari Boxes, most of these houses would initially have no vehicle access when they were being built. Many houses would never have direct link to the vehicle access grid. Basic infrastructure such as roads, water and drainage, if any, followed these boxes after many years from completion of construction of the buildings. Forget about your site having to be accessible, serviceable and buildable. These three attributes are the basic requirements for a piece of land to be able to be urbanised in a well-planned city. Our micro-sized (approximately 60 square meters / 2 anna) land parcels are a byproduct of our ingenious “plotting” system that has no standards for minimum size of land. The existence of heterogeneous random buildings with no sense of aesthetics on such “plots” is an outcome of having no rules (development controls in urban planning terms) about what you could build or how big or how high or where on your land.
The road to nowhere. Bihari Boxes with no amenity or urban quality. Photo: www.airpano.com
Once the houses without basic infrastructure started to mushroom, the urban problems started to multiply. Without a reticulated drainage system, everything and every time residents flush their toilet or wash their vegetables in the kitchen, the waste water ended up directly in the rivers. This happens to this day. Imagine millions of people flushing and washing in the rivers; that is today's Kathmandu.
Our environmental disaster of the new millennium must be dumping the household waste on the river banks and compacting them to build roads. Imagine where did the leachate from those washed out after rain. And we know how incessant monsoon rain could be in the valley. The final nail in the coffin of our rivers is the stone and concrete walls that we have constructed to channel the rivers. This is us formally declaring the rivers an open sewer. It was as if we have no notion or appreciation of riparian zone. A riparian zone is the interface between land and a river or stream. All possible chances of restoring and reviving the river back to its natural state died on the day some fool decided to channel the river by confining it within the impervious concrete and stone walls.
The silliest job ever: sealing the banks of river beyond repair and restoration. Dhobi Khola today. Photo: afaceofktm.wordpress.com
As the pressure of in-migration continued so did the escalation of our social disparity. Homeless people, known as sukumbasi, started to encroach the banks of the river where they built their tarpaulin or plastic huts. It is widely contested to this day if they are the “real” homeless, but that is a topic for another day. The life on the banks of the river in places like Sankhamul, in my view, is a humanitarian disaster. You may visit and see for yourself - those squatters are living in slums next to an open filthy drain that only a few decades ago used to be a thriving river.
Talking of slums, we should not be that carried away. The entire settlement of Kathmandu valley, by any urban planning standard, is nothing more than a slum. I am utterly sorry to say this, but I am only being a messenger here. Just look for yourself the definition of slum below:
UN-HABITAT defines a slum household as a group of individuals living under the same roof in an urban area who lack one or more of the following:
1. Durable housing of a permanent nature that protects against extreme climate conditions.
2. Sufficient living space which means not more than three people sharing the same room.
3. Easy access to safe water in sufficient amounts at an affordable price.
4. Access to adequate sanitation in the form of a private or public toilet shared by a reasonable number of people.
5. Security of tenure that prevents forced evictions.
What I have described above maybe a case of an area around a river catchment in Kathmandu valley. Sadly, the rest of the country has now caught up with the Kathmandu-style urban decay. And they seem to be catching-up fast.
(Coming soon... Vol 2: The way forward; considering the solutions)
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