Note: As part of the ‘Breaking the Vicious Cycle: Planning Water Security In Low-Income Urban Neighbourhoods Through Co-Creation’, PRIA is undertaking a co-creation process in two urban settlements in Gurugram and Delhi – Ghata and Gautampuri. The objective of the co-creation process is: to understand the implications of uncertain availability and decreasing quality of water due to climate-induced impacts on the daily lives, livelihoods, and health of urban poor communities and to center this lived knowledge of risk and vulnerability in future action research to inform stakeholder actions towards inclusive planning for water security in low-income neighborhoods.
Profile of Ghata Village Community
Ghata is an 1100-year-old village settlement situated in Sector 55 of Gurugram and is located 30 kms away from New Delhi. An important commercial hub in North India, Gurugram (formerly known as Gurgaon) has undergone rapid pace of urbanization to accommodate the deluge of professionals waiting to exploit the economic opportunities that the city has to offer. It comprises of people from two extremes of the India’s development strata: well-educated urban professionals who work for some of the biggest firms in the world share their ‘home’ with urban informal settlements to villagers who used to own the land where Gurgaon now stands and migrants, who come to do blue-collar jobs for corporations.
According to the 2011 Census, Ghata has a population of 2128. The Ghata village is housed around the Ghata Jheel, a majestic lake that was once spread over 370 acres and ability to hold some 50 feet of water, which has now reduced to an area of two acres. The Gurgaon Municipal Development Authorities (GMDA) are of the opinion that the majority of the lake’s water recharging area has been destroyed. This has become even more troublesome since the Ghata Lake bed has lost its ability to be a natural drainage system.
The landscape in Ghata village, which once enjoyed the benefits of a sprawling green cover, owing to the abundance of water resources fed by the streams from the Aravalli ranges now lies in a state of depletion and ruin. Urbanization has exacerbated the pace of decline and with lakes and water bodies in the city fast drying up, the city is already under severe water stress. Ghata has now a dumping yard for the residents of the posh apartments situated in the vicinity. In recent times, the streams that replenished such static water bodies have dried up. The forest resource in Haryana where the Ghata village is situated has become vulnerable not only to climate change resulting in increased mean annual temperature but also due to lower and irregular rainfall in the whole of Haryana. The south-western region receives very less and irregular rainfall resulting in the reduced survival of plantations and change in vegetation type. The scanty rainfall has also led to less groundwater recharge. The Haryana State Action Plan on Climate Change lists the following observed changes in climate:
Water in the Community
The traditional and dominant water bodies situated in the village, like the lakes and ponds have dried up long ago. They attribute it to two reasons: declining rainfall and expansion of the city. The drains that supply water to the water bodies are now blocked due to unplanned growth of the city. This has cut off the sources of replenishment of lakes and ponds. Over the years, the dry weather of Gurugram has made the sites of lakes and ponds a landfill. For the residents of the community, the water shortage issues have been a thing of the past. The landlords have fixed motors in their lanes and water is available for all domestic uses including cooking, washing, and bathing twice a day, in the morning and in the evening.
