Impact of Riverfront (Mega Project)

in Urbanizing Landscape of
Metro City
INTRODUCTION
Rivers have been a vital source for urbanizing human civilization from time immemorial. Many
civilization has flourished around along the riverside, in India itself around 20% of cities are based along
a riverside or waterfront. In ancient time’s river acted as an arterial road for transportation, it encouraged
trade, mixing of different communities and was the very reason for existing of humans. But as the years
have passed rivers in cities are either just for beauty or have mixed used scenarios, or worst in some
places it only acts as the main drain for the savage to carry.

Now many communities have realized, preserving and restoration of the waterfront is in progress. To do
so many urban development authorities in metro cities have come up with the idea of riverfront
development which will have parks, trails and walkway corridors, playgrounds, socializing spaces. This
will build a good community interaction place for the city, further, it will create livability, preserve
property values, and provide the infrastructure to promote health and fitness.

The purpose of this report is to analyze the positive and negative impact made by riverfront development
on the urbanism of the city though studying various case studies on the existing riverfront in India like the
Sabarmati riverfront in Ahmedabad, Yamuna riverfront in Delhi, and many more such projects.

In this report we will also analyze government initiatives taken under which riverfronts can be developed,
Nmami Ganga, Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan, Yamuna action plan, launching a new ministry called Jal
Shakti, etc.

This report will give an overall impact of a riverfront development projects carried out in India, and
through this paper, planners and researchers will get an all the extremities of a riverfront development on
urban spaces, it will also help planners in policymaking in order to have a smooth riverfront development.

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 Overview.
A river is especial space in a city, the riverfront land and water interface in general term for a. Consisting
of water regions, water lines and land, it acts as a transitional space from the city to the water, with both
the edge of the land and the water, including certain water and the adjacent urban lands (Liu, 2005).

The riverfront development in various city had a positive as well as negative impact on the city dwellers,
and surrounding ecosystem, what are the urban benefits it has, and how government bodies make polices
regarding it and make the river front the construction possible

Rivers side have always been a major focal point for the human civilization to flus fehrish. From time
immoral several civilization have grown and disappear along a river side. Indus valley civilization was
one of the civilizations which 1st flourished in today Indian sub continents (Rao, 2019)

Urban beginnings were largely depend on transport through water, it played a major role in growing trade
between several dynasties. As time went on, rail- roads came in to the picture. As the time passed, the
water bodies either was pre- served as a thing of beauty or it came to be a mixture of uses. Today our
society are trying to recover the river-front values that have been un-explored or vanished.

Water front can be expected to serve to its fullest potential only when the whole gamut of planning
problems have been addressed. These are as diverse as there are va- rious kinds of water-front properties
the responsibility of waterfront development I meant to be shared with every city. (Lohmann & Lohmann,
2019)

Urban settlements in India have been located on the banks of major perennial rivers like Varanasi,
Patliputra, Mathura and Prayag were located on the banks of Ganga and Yamuna. In South India, Madurai
is located on the river Vaigai, Nasik on the Godavari and Tanjore on the Kaveri. Several factors are
responsible for the selection of the riverbank as the site for the major city. The river has worked as source
of water; worked as highway for trade and commerce; it provided safety against innovators - both the Red
Fort in Delhi and Agra Fort are located on the bank of the Yamuna. Now the riverfront location of cities
is characteristic of the Indian urban scene. .(Contractor & Kapadia, 2012)

Table 1.1 Cities Located On Riverfronts in India

No. City No. City
1. Burhanpur M.P. 14 Agra
2. Delhi 15 Allahabad
3. Guwhati 16 Bharuch

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 4. Hardwar 17 Calcutta
5. Kota 18 Faizabad
6. Kurnool 19 Gorakhpur
7. Nasik 20 Kanpur
8. Cuttack 21 Lucknow
9. Pune 22 Mathura
10. Vijaywada 23 Nelore
11. Vishakhapattanam 24 Patna
12. Shreerang Pattanam 25 Surat
13. Ahmedabad 26 Varanasi
Source: Urbanization and urban system in India by R. Ramachandran.

Objective and Scope

 The objective this study is to understand the importance of river in urban space
 To understand how a riverfront development can affect the life the city flocks
 What are the negative and positive impact of it will have on the ecology of the river water
 How major urban development have paved out its way for contracting riverfront
development.
 What are the design challenges a riverfront development faces
 How it can boast the urban economy.
 To compare various major riverfront present in India and analyses its impact on the city.

Need of Study
Riverfront is an open public space which not only has potential natural landscape but also cultural
heritage of the city, an element of belongings. It is also an urban landscape node, an important location
for tourism and the paragon of city development. Being an important element a study on the water
front is important as it can make or break a pleasant urban scenario. Also it has a major impact on
surrounding ecosystem and is majorly responsible for the Macro climate of the city. Depending upon
the geographic character of different regions, the urban riverfront can be divided into riverfront,
lakeside, and seaside, etc.

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 Sabarmati Riverfront
Ahmedabad

Overview
The Sabarmati River is 371 km long and ‘has always been the defining feature of Ahmedabad’ (Yagnik &
Sheth, 2011, p. 298). The city was founded on the eastern bank of the river in the 1400s (Forrest, 1977),
and until the mid-late 1800s, crossing the river was considered mostly impossible, until the Ellis bridge
was opened in 1870. Ahmedabad is largest city in Gujrat and considered as one of India’s seven mega-
cities by the government (Dhar, Sen, & Kumar, 2006). The urban population has increased by 34% from

3.31 million in 1991 to 4.5 million in 2001 and the average density (in 2011) is 890 persons/km2 (Census
of India, 2011).

Srouce:(Paper, Kapoor, Group, & Kapoor, 2016)

Ahmedabad is divided into three main parts old walled city, on the eastern bank of the river, dating back
to the fifteenth century; the industrial areas outside the walled city in the nineteenth century which have
chawls, or ‘multistoried concrete slums and the west of the city which has been developing since the
1900s as a residential area as rich people moved out of old city n came here .

The Sabarmati Riverfront Development Project at Ahmedabad has attained much attention for its concept,
approach and achievements nationally and internationally. It has won many awards in various categories,
it is one of the best river front developed in India. The international financial institutions have modeled its
experiences and strategies as `best practices’. It has been kept in the list of 100 “Most Innovative
Projects” saying it as a project towards ‘urban regeneration and environmental improvement which will
transform the river as a focal point of leisure and recreation’. There are many cities in india having river

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front site but almost all the cities have abused its rivers, Ahmedabad is the only city which have tried to
solve the its rivers problem. in the path of dong so its city dwellers had to go through a roller coster
journey of mixed feeling . Sabarmati Riverfront Development Project is acting as a model for riverfront
development for other cities in India like Mumbai Kolkata Lucknow. (Patel, 2011)

Source : http://sabarmatiriverfront.com/

Planning
The Riverfront project presents a great Potential to create a public hype to the river on the eastern and
western sides of Ahmedabad. By channeling the river to a constant width of 263m, riverbed land has been
reclaimed to create 11.25 kms of public riverfront on both the banks. The total land reclamation is 204.91
hectares. (Source : http://sabarmatiriverfront.com/)

The stretch of riverfont is mixed land use type including commercial, recreational and residential
developments within the both side of river bank from Gandhi Bridge to Sardar Bridge.(Paneria, Mehta, &
Bhatt, 2017)

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 Table 1 Land Use MAP

SOURCE - (Paneria et al., 2017)

Source : http://sabarmatiriverfront.com/

Figure 1 CONCEPTUAL PLAN

Source : http://sabarmatiriverfront.com/

Figure 2 STREET NETWORK

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Source : http://sabarmatiriverfront.com/

Figure 3 AMENTIES

To keep make the riverfront plan, state government has built the Dharoi dam upstream of the river—albeit
for the irrigation purpose--and the Vasna barrage downstream, these two dams are responsible for
ponding of river in the cites stretch it the most critical part of the project and lifeline of the project,
possibility

Also the visionary pioneers is Prof. Bernard Kohn, a French-American architect, who conceived the idea,
worked on comprehensive project feasibility blueprint and advocated its implementation vigorously with
the government. We must include the political leadership and the officers in the municipal administration
and the state government who appreciating the vision and accepted the idea.(Desai, 2012b)

The project concept and its benefits to the city got the technical feasibility of the narrowing of the river
width examined scientifically at the Khadakwasla laboratory. It also includes the River Front
Development Group (RFDG), a group of professionals and NGOs, who took upon themselves to activate
the project in the mid ‘80s (Shah, 2013)

Positive Impact of Development

The Sabarmati Riverfront Development Project (SRFD Project) has achieved four major objectives:

(a) This project have converted the drawbacks of Sabarmati river due to waterlessness, pollution and
neglect, into an asset by making it perennially water filled in the city stretch.it has eliminated the major
source of water pollution , 39 savage lines were diverted from the river which was dumping untreated
savage into it . Also it has drastically reduced possibility of further pollution by putting the river water
and the river banks to multiple public uses.

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(b) This project gave the citizens a large, centrally located and much needed civic space to the city when
the city was carving of open spaces, by amalgamating the existing and the reclaimed lands obtained by
trimming the river for recreation and leisure purposes

(c) This project has created a precedent in form of an institutional mechanism for project planning and
implementation, in form of a special purpose vehicle, namely the Sabarmati Riverfront Development
Corporation Limited (SRFDCL) that would serve the city further in developing such huge scale ambitious
projects

(d) This project has come out a major landmark for the city, creating a world class identity of Ahmedabad
in rapid urban development. The BRTS is the other such project in the city adding to modern scene of the
city.(Shah, 2013)

Source https://architexturez.net/doc/az-cf-166149

MAJOR ISSUES IN THE PROJECT

REHABILITATION

Before this project, the riverbank had 70 formal and informal settlements providing habitat to
about 40 thousand families .(Mathur, 2012) It is also used for regular markets, and other
livelihood activities, particularly urban farming, local laundries (dhobi ghats), as well as cultural
activities of riverbank residents (Goyena, 2019)

The fear of widespread eviction and resettlement the locals formed a , the settlers formed a
coalition called the Sabarmati Nagarik Adhikar Manch (SNAM) or SabarmatiCitizen s Rights
Forum. Which worked for the effected mass.

Prior to the comemnment of the project the Gujarat High Court to ensured that the local
authority providethe effected peplep a rehabilitation plan and transparent process of identify
cation and coverage of families living on the riverbank . However, in spite of these efforts, in the

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years 2004-05, 3,000 to 4,000 families were evicted from the riverfront as well as from a number
of other urban infrastructure projects all over the city . (Follmann, 2015)

Effect of resettlement.

communities whose livelihoods depended on river like the laundry/washing stalls, vegetable
farms on the fertile complain, numerous informal vending and market spaces, open areas for
children to play, and the waste cleaning operations carried out by riverbank residents and such
activities were severely effected which government considered not important. Many scholarly
minds considered the riverfront project a boon for the poor residents of the riverfront. The new
clusters made for rehabilitate the project-affected households , the city u Jawaharlal Nehru
National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) funds from the central government to build
affordable housing, which many thought was way better the existing ones. (Mathur, 2012)

The project’s view ignored the everyday negotiations of the residents, workers and the riverbank
space, and oriented the public gaze towards a disconnected rehabilitation plan
Overtime, collaborations between IIMA faculty, students and researchers, professors and
researchers from the Centre for Urban Equity and otherunits at CEPT University, the National
Institute of Design (NID), civil society organisations and community groups led to a number of
workshops, seminars, and public hearings starting with a research-based documentary fi lm.14
This fi lm served to show the conditions of the displaced people, their struggles and the lack of
transparency around the Sabarmati project.
With immense public and media exposure, the then chief justice of the Gujarat High Court (S J
Mukhopadhyay) took note of the issues raised in the public hearing and gave a favourable
judgment in the PIL launched by the slum-dwellers/vendors associations (Express News Service
2009).
Another problem generated in the displacement from the riverfront was the requirement of
documents to establish residency dating prior to 1976 in order for a family to be eligible for
rehabilitation housing. This requirement produced further uncertainty and insecurity among the
riverfront residents,
the local authority began to formalize a process of paperwork regarding allotment of
rehabilitation housing under the central government’s part-funded Basic Services for the Urban

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Poor (BSUP) scheme. Some 13 different sites had been identifi ed where construction of four-
storey “fl ats” of 25-28 square meters each were to be constructed to house each evicted family
irrespective of family size, based on eligibility being validated through possession of identity
papers, address
proofs, birth certify cates, etc.
However, none of these projects were habitable even after four months of the court’s ruling, even
though these housing estate projects had started a few years ago. The court then ordered the
AMC to appoint a special committee to monitor and track the process of housing allotments on
the riverbank.
The Saga of Gujari Bazaar
In April 2011, a PIL was fi led in the Gujarat High Court to preventthe eviction of the Gujari
Bazaar. The Gujari Bazaar had formally been served an eviction notice in August 2010. Prior to
this legal notice, the Gujari Bazaar association had instituted their own process of designing an
upgradation and modernization plan, responding to the remarks of the urban planner and city
authorities that “the market was fi lthy, disorganised and disorderly, lacks basic amenities and is
generally unfi t for the experience of the upper income groups”.19

Distances
In the period 2011-12, around 19,000 families from the riverfront, have been resettled in the 13
new housing estates built under the BSUP scheme of the JNNURM, the central government’s fl
agship project aimed at some level of basic service provision for the poor (Times News Network
2012). However, while these housing estates are spread throughout the city, the evidence shows
that the allocation of housing has been highly selective with regard to distance from the eviction
sites. The minimum distance between an evicted family’s previous riverbank home and
resettlement site is fi ve kilometers, the average distance is about nine km, and the furthest
relocation is about 16 km, even though estates closer to eviction points were available
(Patel 2012).
Not only do these distances sever links between the families’ work, food and nutrition security,
education and health amenities, but also breaks long-established community relationships and
networks. It violates one of the core principles established within the riverfront development
project, of providing resettlement housing in close proximity to the previous

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site (EPC 1998: 52).V(Mathur, 2012)
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS

The Land-Use Plan:

The 1998 proposal recommended relocatingresidents of riverfront slums on the developed riverfront. Its
mapping of slums thus fed into the proposed land-use plan for the riverfront. Three slum relocation sites,
totalling an area of 15.48 hectares or 9.5% of the reclaimed land, were allocated for the 4,400 project-
affected households. Their location was based on the mapping, along with a number of considerations
regarding design of resettlement units and the idea that “relocation of low- income communities at distant
locations, by disrupting the close relationship between the place of work and residence, has a very
negative impact on their economic and social well being” (EPC 1998: 44).

The Rs 1,200 crore SRD project is one of the many urban projects that have emerged around the world
over the past two decades, with the articulation of new urban imaginaries. They powerfully link particular
projects and landscapes of urban infrastructure, beautification and real estate development to expectations
that these will enhance city competitiveness and attract investors, stimulate urban economic growth,
and/or improve quality of life. In Indian cities, realising such projects has often been contingent on
governing the urban poor and the spaces they inhabit in ways that make possible the redevelopment of
these spaces.(Desai, 2012a)

Delhi’s Yamuna
Delhi’s Yamuna lost much of her voluminous, playful presence some centuries ago, first to the
WesternYamuna Canal built in the 14th century by Firuz Shah Tughlaq, the Sultan of Delhi, to enable
irrigation, and thus cultivation, in the largely barren lands surrounding it; yet again in the 1830s when the
Eastern Yamuna canal was built for similar purposes by the British; and even more recently by the barrages
built at Dakpathar and Hathni Kund/Tajewala, upstream of Delhi, all of this cumulatively resulting in Delhi
receiving no more than 10 percent of the water of the river (Haberman,2006)

Towards the closing years of the 19th century, when wells began to fail as sources of drinking water, the
river emerged as the chief source of water for domestic purposes.5 As much of this water that flowed into
the city also had to find an outlet somewhere, either on land or in a water body, the Yamuna also served as
the city’s sink.

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Concomitantly, the riverside also became available as a new terrestrial resource with land being reclaimed
from it to set up a modern power plant, even as the same plant began to pose new threats of water and air
pollution (Government of India, 1936). For much of this history, the Yamuna also informed the aesthetics
of Delhi’s built spaces. Prof. Nararyani Gupta, the city’s foremost historian, describes the beauty of the
Faiz nahar (Faiz canal) as its waters flowed through the central streets of traditional Delhi (Gupta, 1981).
In time, the canal dried up, but the riverfront still excited the urban imagination. A plan for developing the
riverfront was first proposed in 1913, around the time of the inaugural of Delhi as the newcapital city of
India.6

The scheme of river improvement and water treatment, the plan drawn up for the new capital mentioned,
was intended to provide for an improved and healthier river frontage from Wazirabad on the north (near
where the river entered Delhi) to a point below Indrapat (where it exited on the south) (Delhi Town
Planning Committee, 1913).

Planning by government
Delhi’s Yamuna lost much of her voluminous, playful presence some centuries ago, first to the Western
Yamuna Canal built in the 14th century by Firuz Shah Tughlaq, the Sultan of Delhi, to enable irrigation,
and thus cultivation, in the largely barren lands surround ing it; yet again in the 1830s when the Eastern
Yamuna canal was built for similar purposes by the British; and even more recently by the barrages built
at Dakpathar and Hathni Kund/Tajewala, upstream of Delhi, all of this cumulatively resulting in Delhi
receiving no more than 10 percent of the water of the river (Haberman,2006).

Pollution
there was yet another massive flood in 1955–56, with the course of the river shifting and bringing the
intake point of the drinking water supply close to the point where the wastewater from the city was
discharged into the Yamuna Engineering works and planning were recommended as steps to ensure that
no such mishaps happened in the future, as also ensuring that no haphazard constructionwas undertaken,
especially in low-lying and difficult to drain areas.

Around the same time, embankments were built on the east bank to prevent future flooding of settlements
in that part of the city. The floods could not be stopped easily, however, and the city remained witness to
them at fairly regular intervals right through the 1970s, an especially intense one being the flood of 1978
that breached the embankment on the right bank, flooding considerable areas in north Delhi. Nor was the

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flow of sewage into the river fully contained. And in time, the challenges posed by these developments,
and the persistence of failure in this regard, led to the issue of planning and river management becoming
matters of concern for the courts, including the Supreme Court of India (hereafter the Court).

In response to a public interest litigation (PIL, Sathe, 2002) filed in the Supreme Court of India regarding
pollution in Delhi the Court observed in 1994 that ‘with the increase of population in Delhi it is of utmost
urgency to set up the sewage treatment plants [STPs] within the time bound schedule Not all were
convinced. The potential dispossessed, those whose lands had been earmarked for being taken over for
the construction of the sewage plants, went to the Delhi High Court and obtained a stay order demanding
compensation on current prices, only for it to be vacated by the Supreme Court’

In August 2003, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) reported that out of the total of 30 STPs, 20
were running under capacity, 5 STPs were running over capacity, 3 STPs were non functional while only
2 STPs were running to their capacity! By 2006, Delhi had built 17 sewage treatment plants, 10 common
effluent plants, repaired 30 km of trunk sewers repairs
(out of 130 km) and removed several jhuggies (slums) from the riverfront. It had in the process acquired
40% of India’s total installed capacity of STPs, but utilization capacity was still suspect with close to a
quarter of the plants working at less than 30% capacity.

Pollution and displacement

Alongside the issue of requisite infrastructure, a different narrative of dirt/waste/pollution of the river and
the fate of the people residing adjacent to it began to unfold. Since the building of the first embankments
on the Yamuna in 1955/56, several new embankments had been built in Delhi. Equally, the lands between
the river and these embankments had gradually become sites for informal housing, consequent upon the
massive flows of migrant labour into Delhi, especially in the wake of the construction requirements for
the Asian Games of 1982.
Thus among the components of the Integrated Plan for the Yamuna as elaborated by the Supreme
Court was also the removal/relocation of slums from the Yamuna river banks and the drains of the city.

A couple of years later it was the turn of the Delhi High Court which in March 2003 ordered the different
governments in Delhi to clear the banks of the Yamuna, as the issue of encroachment got entangled with
the question of pollution. Electroplating units, dye units and dairies, together with the seemingly unending
flow of human excrement, came together to present apicture of the 22 slums cluster (the Yamuna Pushta,

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the largest slum cluster in Delhi) as being the major spoiler of the river (The Hindu, 2004).

The consequence was that while 51,461 houses had been demolished in Delhi between 1990 and 2003
under ‘slum clearance’ schemes, as many as 45,000 homeswere demolished between 2004 and 2007
alone, while eviction notices were served on at least three other large settlements towards the end of 2007
(Bhan, 2009).

Yamuna Expressway, a four lane highway built to speed up traffic at the time of the Commonwealth
Games, bringing one more feature of ‘world class’ Delhi to the Yamuna bank (Baviskar, 2011a). Delhi’s
largest depot for its public bus service, high-end luxury apartments originally designed to house athletes
participating in the Commonwealth Games and metro stations. As evident from above, by the 1990s it
had become clear that not all was well with the river, and its imminent death was much anticipated,
affected as it was by practices both local and regional. Pesticide runoffs from fields in the neighboring
state of Haryana,
Upstream of Delhi, were an issue of contention between the two state governments. In Delhi itself, there
was the untreated domestic waste of the residents, living in the formal city or in informal slums that found
its outfall into the river. The city’s industries, though largely situated away from the river, with the
exception of a major power plant, also used the river as a major outfall for their effluents, treated or
otherwise.

the latest Master Plan of the city conceived of the river front a lot differently, suggestive as its
predecessors of the visual integration of the river and the city, but marked by a deeper concern with
environmental loss: ‘At another level, a strategy for the conservation/ development of the Yamuna river
bed area needs to be developed and implemented in a systematic manner. The issue is sensitive both in
terms of the environment and public perceptions. (Desai, 2012a)

Projects that affected Yamuna

Urban mega-projects in the floodplain The recent development of mega-projects along the river
Yamuna suggests that the riverbed is no longer the terra nullius (Baviskar, 2011), but rather the
once underutilized land of the riverbed now plays a key role in the restructuring of Delhi to
become ‘world-class’.

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The Akshardham Temple complex The Akshardham Temple complex was inaugurated on 6th of
November 2005 after a construction period of about five years e that is to say at the same time as when
the major slum demolitions took place, only a few hundred meters away in the riverbed

A religious trust12 had been trying to acquire land for a temple in Delhi since 1968. Several times the
DDA proposed allocations of land to the trust for the construction of a temple, but the trust refused these
lands seeking a plot in the riverbed. On 21st of April 2000, DDA sold about 23.5 hectares of land close to
the eastern embankment of the river Yamuna to the trust

since DDA had earlier envisaged to develop a financial district and a convention Centre at the location of
today’s temple complex (DDA e Special Project Cell, 1998).In this context, DDA had initially assigned
the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) e government-sponsored
environmental expert body e to prepare an ‘Environmental Management Plan’ to scientifically support its
channelization scheme (NEERI,1999). NEERI, however, reviewed the channelization schemes critically
and recommended only public and semi-public uses, e.g. recreational, cultural, and religious land-uses
(NEERI, 1999). This opened the door for the temple to become reality in the riverbed.

From DDA’s perspective the construction of the temple has been an entry point for planned/formal
development of the floodplain.
when the construction of Akshardham was already well underway, the Supreme Court admitted a Public
Interest Litigation by the Uttar Pradesh
State Employees Confederation (UPSEC) against the construction of Akshardham.

The petitioner argued among other things that the construction of Akshardham would adversely affect the
recharge of groundwater, would lead to narrowing the river resulting in floods and that the allotment of
land to the trust was contrary to the existing development plans

The petition was dismissed by the Supreme Court on 12th January 2005 e only 8 months before the
temple opened. After all, the fact remains that Akshardham was constructed without any environmental
impact assessment

The Commonwealth Games Village Covering about 59 ha, the ‘village’ e actually a residential
complex comprising of 34 high-rise buildings with 1168 apartments16 e has been developed through a
publiceprivate partnership

15
by the DDA and the Dubai-based real estate developer, Emaar MGF. It was built to accommodate about
8000 athletes and officials during the Commonwealth Games in October 2010. Today, the residential
zone of the Games Village has been transformed into a
gated community.behind closed-doors a decisionwas taken by the DDA to locate the athletes’
village on the remaining land reclaimed by the Akshardham Bund (HLC, 2011: 14f.). After getting the
location approved by the Union
Cabinet in 2003, DDA had to regularize the decision by changing the Master Plan (HLC, 2011: 15). Two
steps must be mentioned here: First, earlier in 1999, the DDA changed the land use of an area of 42.5 ha
from ‘agricultural and water body’ to ‘public and semipublic
use’ in the Master Plan. While in those days the Games Village was still very much “a pie in the sky”
idea, this land-use change was needed for the development of Akshardham, but covered a larger precinct
area than just the proposed temple. Second, as a modification of the earlier notification, the DDA changed
the land use of an area of 11 ha to ‘residential’ and 5.5 ha to ‘commercial/
hotel’ in August 2006.

In order to seek environmental clearance for the mega-project, the DDA approached the Ministry of
Environment and Forests in 2006. During the clearance process, the Expert Appraisal Committee,
consisting of independent experts constituted by the Ministry of Environment and Forests, suggested
looking for an alternative site, since the committee feared negative impacts on the river. On 14th
December 2006, the ministry, however, cleared the project in the riverbed under strict conditions. Among
others it allowed only temporary structures to be built.17 This restriction would have signified the end of
DDA’s plan to develop a high-class residential complex on the riverbed. Not willing to accept these
recommendations by the ministry, the DDA entrusted the Central Water Power Research Station
(CWPRS) e another governmentsponsored expert body e to carry out a study to assess the impact of the
already existing Akshardham Bund; and CWPRS came to the conclusion, that the Akshardham Bund
would not cause “any undesirable flow condition in the vicinity of existing structures” (CWPRS 2007:
V). The ministry therefore amended its environmental clearance on 2nd April 2007 saying that “DDA
could go ahead with the planning and construction works, permanent or temporary, subject to the
conditions

In January 2008, NEERI certified that the site of the Games Village “is deemed to be no more a part of
the flood plain zone”, since the Akshardham Bund is demarking the new boundary of the river.22

16
The High Court therefore set up a Committee of Experts to make sure that the conditions of the final
environmental clearance given by the ministry were met.23 Unsatisfied with this order all parties went to
Supreme Court. Finally, in July 2009 e 14 months before the games took place e the Supreme Court
dismissed the petitions by the NGOs. Referring to the affidavit by NEERI, the Supreme Court came to the
conclusion that “the site in question is neither a ‘floodplain’ nor a ‘riverbed’”.22 Additionally, the former
Supreme Court ruling on Akshardhamwas reviewed as a “binding precedent” for the Games Village.24
By simplifying the complex nature of the ecology of the river to the existence of a man-made
embankment, the Supreme Court avoided having to justify its decision, bowing to the urgency and
national prestige of the Commonwealth Games and, thus, the wellresearched arguments by the petitioners
had become meaningless (cf. Baviskar, 2011: 51).

Discussion: urban mega-projects as zones of exception The implementation of the two urban mega-
projects in the floodplain illustrates many aspects cited in the literature on megaprojects around the world.
These include among others the bypassing of statutory regulations, the important role of the national
government, the involvement of international real estate companies and special purpose vehicles
(publiceprivate partnership of DDA with Emaar MGF and its connection to the organizing
committee for the Games Village), as well as the pressure brought to bear on regulatory agencies and the
courts to meet fixed deadlines for mega-events. With regard to pressure of time, the Games Village case
shows that in contrast to the government’s strategy to accuse the environmental NGOs for a delay of their
petitions and the courts’ acknowledgement of this, it has been the government itself (in particular the
DDA and the organizing committee) which for whatever reasons deliberately kept the site decision secret
an delayed the clearance process. Since major decisions were taken behind closed doors, the civil society
at large only came to know about the projects when all major decisions had been taken (a
typical process for mega-projects, see Gellert & Lynch, 2003).

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