The activists cleaning the river

Other voices put forth different perspectives, expressing frustration with the situation of the urban informal settlements and governmental development actions. When a relocated past inhabitant of one of the informal settlements currently residing in Kirtipur Relocation Housing was interviewed, he stated his views on what relocation housing should be like. He stated his concerns about the pollution of the city and strongly suggested that the housing should be away from the city, in the outskirts. He argued that the housing should still be within the valley and that the people should be satisfied with the location of the housing. The dissatisfaction was in the dense development of commercial and industrial buildings in the core of the city that dump the sewage in the rivers. He was very pessimistic about the fact that other better waste disposal methods could be invented in the future. He said, even after 10 years, people are still going to dump all the waste in the rivers. In such circumstances, the housing built in the core of the city might last for maximum 10-20 years before it gets completely destroyed by the slumming activities once again.

While Shrestha and Shrestha (2020) conclude that access to drinking water and education, as well as proper waste management and sanitation infrastructure are the most pressing issues of the informal settlements at the Bagmati river, Reilly Brooks (2016) comes to a different conclusion with further reaching political implications. Analyzing the conflicting perspectives of the squatters and government agents of Kathmandu, Brooks concludes that security of tenure is the most central aspects for enhancing the situation of the squatters and mitigate the ongoing conflicts, because the constant fear of eviction hinders the inhabitant to work on community-driven development, to make use of their citizen rights and to participate in the debates on relocation.

The Bagmati Cleaning Campaign was started with the aim to clean the river and make people aware not to throw waste in the rivers anymore. The Campaign conducted door-to-door programs to teach people how to make compost, accompanied by governmental policies to punish people throwing garbage in the river (HPCIDBC, 2021). As per the statistics stated by HPCIDBC, 15000 metric ton waste has already been extracted from the Bagmati River for which 2,500 organizations have participated and 1,000,000 people have been involved directly or indirectly in cleaning the Bagmati River. The organizations that are involved include NGOs, INGOs, Private Organizations, Community Based Organizations, Mother Groups, Schools and Colleges, Religious Organizations etc. working on the Bagmati Cleaning Campaign every week. A public group of these activists and environmentalists on Facebook has around 35000 members at present. Multiple government and non-government organizations, educational institutions, business institutions, activists and individual volunteers can be seen participating in the campaign. For many individual volunteers, personal satisfaction of cleaning their surroundings and happiness is the key driver to keep going. Some activists express their concerns about how the polluting activities of the river are sinful and that god will punish them for doing so. These activists are foremost concerned with the river as a site of cultural heritage and therefore even criticize the governmental modernization projects for taking the altered river morphology for granted in their conceptions of public green areas, instead of aiming for the recreation of the former course of the river as stated

“Should we bring the water back to places like this [a temple], or should we build parks that assume the water will stay where it is—far, far away from our holy places?” (Rademacher, 2011, p. 3)

Still other activist are focused on the environmental value of the Bagmati river, whether as a good for itself, or as a resource for the people of Nepal and a attraction for tourist, as put forth by a young activist:

“I just finished high school and aim to study environmental engineering. [...] I want to send a message to the people that you should not just focus on cleaning only your house, you should think about the environment too. These rivers and the environment are our major national asset and they are what attract the tourists to the country so we should stop destroying nature in this way.” (Source: Facebook Profile: DrLaxmi Paudyal, May 7th, 2022)

In some cases politicians and their agents are participating in cleaning activities to boost their popularity for upcoming elections:

“In the face of the upcoming local elections, we are constantly cleaning the river. [...] In the current local elections, I request everyone to vote for the candidate who loves the people, aims for development, and especially who is capable of managing the city’s waste. Even God will punish those who make the city dirty. Jay Bagmati!” (Source: Facebook profile: Khagendra Karki, May 7th, 2022)

These stakeholders might have different interests driving them to be present there at Bagmati River every week but the common agenda is to clean the river and its banks. While interviewing one of the stakeholders who retired from a government job after 35 years of service, moved to Canada, and is still actively promoting the river cleaning campaign every day, he shared his thoughts for the whole Bagmati River scenario. Regarding his motivation to get involved with the Bagmati Cleaning Campaign, he said that he was involved in Bagmati related projects for about 14 years. He had seen clean water in the river during his childhood and assured that previous generations did not pollute the river. Since our generation polluted the river, he said that we should apologize for that and make up for it by cleaning the river so that we can pass a cleaner river to the future generation.

Regarding squatters he said: “The squatter settlement besides the river is one of the main problems of Bagmati. But this is beyond the scope of campaigners. This is due to an unplanned policy of the Nepal government. [...] The government is aware of these problems, trying to solve those problems too. But it is slow speed. Government should be more responsible and increase their speed to solve the problem. [...] Those people living on the bank of Bagmati river should be shifted to another residential area, the government can manage it. The riverbank can be used as a park, heritage sites, walking area and attractive tourist spots.”

Fig: River cleaning campaign (Source: Chand, 2022)