Bringing back lake teams officially

Amid BBMP’s staff shortages, lakes stand abandoned. The solution? Empower local lake committees to breathe life back into them.

The Kaikondrahalli lake near Sarjapur Road, measuring about 48 acres, was rejuvenated in 2008-09 by spending crores of rupees. At its prime four years later, the lake teemed with birds and flora and fauna, with good water quality.

Today, the lake has returned to the same old condition. “Citizens cannot do anything about it now. The horticulture department is spending lakhs of rupees to uproot native trees and plant ornamental trees, which makes no sense. The fence is completely broken. The diversion pipeline has to be done. The island has died. The lake is filled with sewage. BBMP and BWSSB planned to lay diversion pipelines separately, but none of them came through,” says Shilpi Sahu, a trustee of Mahadevapura Parisara Abhivrusshi Samithi that was involved in the rejuvenation of the lake. 

“As citizens, we are helpless; we just want the lake water to be clean. The work has been delayed so much, and the water is dark green,” she adds. The same issue continues with another lake, Saul Kere, where people cannot hold the contractor accountable as the rejuvenation project suffers from a fund crunch.

At the heart of the problem is a Karnataka High Court order of March 4, 2020, which said: “The affidavit of the state government brings on record another disturbing feature regarding the memorandum of understanding (MoU) executed by the State Government with Corporate Entities.”

It went on to say: “Prima facie, it appears to us that by the execution of the said agreements, the State wants to shift its burden of maintaining the lakes to the private Corporate Entities. Unless the legality of such agreements is examined, we cannot permit the State Government to execute such agreements. Therefore, we direct that till further orders are passed, the State Government shall not execute any such MoU with any Corporate Entity. However, this order will not prevent the State Government from taking funds from the Corporate Entities for the rejuvenation of lakes.”

Following this, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) stopped signing MoUs with citizen groups in Bengaluru who acted as custodians of the lake, monitoring water quality and lake premises, raising alarms when required and getting things done by co-ordinating with various government agencies. The system of lake MoUs came up after the N K Patil report submitted as part of a litigation recommended the constitution of lake management committees involving local residents and voluntary organisations.

All the MoUs BBMP had signed expired in 2020, and local citizen groups had no official standing to coordinate lake works.

MoU as recognition

Usha Rajagopal, the founder of Puttenahalli Neighbourhood Lake Improvement Trust, explains the issue: “We have always maintained the lake with donations from the locality. So, the MoU issue has not affected us much. But, we won’t be able to undertake any new work because we don’t have a valid MoU.”

The lake is small, measuring 13 acres 25 guntas, with no sewage entering the lake, with good water quality. “But we have been working on this lake for 13 years. Not having the MoU indicates that the government does not recognise our efforts. We are not doing this for any money. We are partnering with BBMP to take care of the lake, because we are the lake users,” she explains.

“People donating to us for lake maintenance trust us because they can see the lake’s condition anytime. They know where their money is going,” she adds.

Shilpi Sahu says that companies are interested in funding lake maintenance through CSR, but they have to directly form an agreement with BBMP’s lake division as of now. Even BBMP’s own works such as desilting, fencing and diversion drains, are not getting done. “If required, we can get CSR funding for this, but we can’t do it without an MoU,” she adds.

Rama Prasad V, a lake expert in the city who founded Friends of Lakes, says: “Any NGO or citizens group should know what involves the maintenance of lakes. Right now, beautification of lakes is happening, but water quality suffers.” He highlights the lack of understanding among citizens regarding the perception of lake maintenance. He says that lake water quality should be one of the key result areas in the lake maintenance MoUs and tenders. 

“The money needed is huge; the responsibility of raising it cannot be given to citizens. If citizen committees are formed, one person from the committee should also be a part of the ward committee. Any citizen involvement should be under the 74th Amendment,” he adds. The government should allot a major portion of the money for maintenance by calling tenders. 

“If the government is ready to hand over the lakes to citizen groups, we will take it over. It means every parcel of the lake land should be given back to citizens. The government keeps the lake ownership and wants to build roads or other projects on lake land. They want citizens to take care of the lake, but when citizens say they don’t want the road on the lake, they do not respect it,” he says.

He gives the example of Nagawara Lake where Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Llimited wants two acres inside the lake. “Why can’t they rejuvenate and maintain the lake? If you want to hand over, hand over the entire lake and citizens will take a call on what to do,” he adds.

‘Let citizens be custodians’

Usha says that the BBMP cannot maintain the lakes as citizens do on its own. “If sewage trickles in, residents call the BWSSB immediately. According to the MoU, we are supposed to inform the BBMP, and they will take it up with the BWSSB. By then, the situation would be aggravated. Specific problems need to be handled then and there only. We cannot just report it to somebody and wait for the budget to get approved. That is why localites are the best caretakers of the lake,” she adds.

“No other city has such a vocal and supportive citizenry as Bengaluru when it comes to protecting lakes. For this trend to sustain and grow, the government has to recognise us, support us and make it as easy as possible because getting volunteers is difficult. We are not activists pointing fingers at them. We are helping them,” says Usha.

A repository of lake information

Rajagopalan R, President of JP Nagara Resident Welfare Association, who started looking into sewage in stormwater drains, ended up studying gaps in lake management where these drains end up and noted a challenge.

“The government and its parastatals are ultimately responsible for funding, maintenance and custody of the lakes. The technical capacity constraints, like qualified environmental engineers and other resource limitations of BBMP, present a challenge to manage over 200 water bodies spread over 8000 acres. A civil engineering perspective alone does not help. An engineer assigned to lakes can visit a maximum of two-three lakes per day to inspect and address issues,” he says.

“Many domain experts and activists have toiled hard in the last decade to restore some of these lakes and draw attention to this crisis. There are NGOs backed by corporate sponsors willing to help locally being lake custodians. But I don’t think the citizen’s movement is organised enough to tackle this problem,” he says.

He says there are no answers to questions like, where do I begin to be a lake custodian, what permissions do I require, what do I need to do if I were to start a trust? How do I read the monthly water quality information published by KSPCB and if there is an issue that needs attention? How do I raise CSR funds? How do I invest the funds effectively and report on it? “As a citizen movement, with the proposed partnership between BBMP and NGOs along with CSR funding, the management of our lakes can be institutionalised,” he feels.

He highlights the need for a platform to bridge the information, community and commerce gap and reduce friction. His project, a digital platform called Namma Kere, aims to consolidate all lake-related information, legal updates, events, fund-raising opportunities, trust formation processes and procedures for various lake rejuvenation and management initiatives.

‘Lake policy, MoU format to be ready by mid-October’

Preeti Gehlot, BBMP special commissioner (lakes), said the new policy for citizen involvement in lake management will be finalised by mid-October. A new memorandum of understanding template is also being prepared, which will be published along with the policy.

Preeti says that until now, there has been no policy. The new official policy will allow locals to join hands with BBMP if they wish to monitor the lakes, while also including the framework to get corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds.

The policy will have a mechanism to avoid vested interests entering through the backdoor through the CSR route. “We have to comply with the high court’s order before entering into new agreements,” she explained.

When asked whether the policy will fix the accountability for water quality, she said water quality is a separate issue. “Based on the root cause, a particular entity or organisation must be held accountable. This subject is not being dealt with in the policy. The policy is mostly for reaching out to citizen groups and corporates,” she added.