The decision was taken during a symposium held on 'Reviving and Nurturing River and other Urban Water Ecologies of Mumbai' at Maharashtra Nature Park in Dharavi on Friday.
In a move that can be a shot in the arm for rivers of Mumbai, it has been decided to set up a 'River Parliament' as well as to come up with a detailed Urban River Rejuvenation Policy for Mumbai, which will propose an action plan to rejuvenate all the rivers in the city beginning with the 12km long Dahisar river. In fact the whole community-led movement is being headed by Rajendra Singh, India's waterman and winner of the 2015 Stockholm Water Prize.
The decision was taken during a symposium held on 'Reviving and Nurturing River and other Urban Water Ecologies of Mumbai' at Maharashtra Nature Park in Dharavi on Friday. The symposium was attended by several citizen groups to discuss, in detail, a case study of Dahisar river rejuvenation.
It was Singh who pressed the need for setting up a river parliament, which will be a body of various stakeholders that will discuss and play an important role for Dahisar river rejuvenation project. "We will have to have a dialogue with everyone and involve all the stakeholders, including local politicians the civic body officials as well as people who are involved in activities leading to pollution of the river and the residents of the area where the river flows," he informed. He added that this will help in ensuring that the rejuvenation work is carried in a proper manner and the civic body does not simply end up constructing concrete walls on the sides and convert the river into a nalla.
Avinash Kubal, deputy director of Maharashtra Nature Park shared, "All the rivers of Mumbai, including Dahisar start getting polluted as soon as they enter the urban limits. The increasing pollution of these water bodies is affecting every citizen directly or indirectly and hence with the citizen groups like River March and Water Environs we had decided to organise this meet so that we can build up a larger movement to help rejuvenate the rivers." He added that one of the biggest achievements of this symposium has been that Rajendra Singh had agreed to be the face of it.
Gopal Zaveri, founding partner of River's March — a community-led movement that has been working and creating awareness on rivers of Mumbai said, "We have been raising awareness about the rivers of Mumbai specially Dahisar river as most of us stay in this area. We have heard how this river was once known to be a destination for film shoots but now everyone refers to it as a nalla. Hence, we have decided that this needs to be changed and we as a group of citizens are asking for the river to be restored."
Kimaya Keluskar, founder member of Water Environs — a group of architects and environment professionals who have come together to formulate specific approach of River Biodiversity Revival through community participation informed that the river needs to be cleaned and rejuvenated using bio-techniques and even presented the study and research their team carried out on Dahisar river.
In fact as part of the meet a detailed discussion was held where all the stakeholders, including activists, citizen groups, politicians as well as representatives from the dhobi and tabela units discussed the problems as well as the solutions to ensure that all possible conflicts were taken care of for the Dahisar river rejuvenation.
According to Singh, a core committee will be set up and not only would they bring out an Urban River Rejuvenation Policy for Mumbai but also try and make it in a way that the policy can be relevant all across the State.
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