Discussion

DISCUSSIONS

The word Bagmati does not just represent the river but also the spaces around it, like the river banks, the cultural heritage and monuments, the formal and informal local communities, the newly built stretches of green promenade, pockets of green parks; a string that binds the Kathmandu Valley and its inhabitants as a whole. Bagmati as a space is looked upon by different stakeholders with different objectives. While the government and activists regard it as a public space they need to recapture, for the squatters it is their home and refuge and therefore they like to claim it as their private dwelling. As urban planners, it becomes necessary to grasp all the conflicting ideas for an overall perspective of the case and its actors, to propose solutions that are beneficial for all related stakeholders and realistic for the authorities to implement.

Ecological and social issues may be in opposition regarding the creation of parks on the river banks, where currently people are living in informal settlements. On the other hand, the ongoing degradation of river water quality is not only an ecological problem but also raises questions of public health – a central issue of social inequality. But these issues are treated differently by different stakeholders. While the squatters are exposed to unsanitary living conditions, the other stakeholders view the act of squatting itself as an unsanitary act that degrades the river. The urbanists advocating for the brown agendas argue that the river should be cleaned and the squatters should be relocated to appropriate housing, the environmentalists advocating the green agendas believe that the river sides should be cleaned of the squatting people and other garbage to let nature take over its original form, regardless of whether the squatters are relocated or not. In contrast to both the green and brown agendas, what the squatters really demand is legal tenure for the land they are currently residing on. Also to summarize all the different agents engaged against the environmental degradation of Bagmati as working on the same green agenda must be deemed as a problematic simplification, since their motives are heterogenous and partially even conflicting. While the plans of the government and international organization of constructing parks along the river banks are based on the ideal of modernization, many activist engaged in cleaning the river and raising awareness for its degradation

Fig: Different facades of Bagmati (Source: Gotsch, 2022)