Paying the Price for Crossing Swords With Uttar Pradesh Regime

Uttar Pradesh dwellers are well aware of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s style of functioning. As a result of his flat-out approach, few would wish to cross swords with him. Vineet Narain—anti-corruption activist turned heritage conservator—realised this when he went public with his criticism of some of the chief minister’s appointees. According to Narain, they had submitted inflated estimates, far exceeding the actual cost of a project related to water conservation. Narain has been working to revive the kunds, or water bodies in the Braj region of Uttar Pradesh, which Hindus regard as sacred, for almost two decades.

Vrindavan, on the banks of the Yamuna River, is in the Braj region, and it was once famous for lush green forests and kunds that dated back many centuries. These water bodies served as critical water sources during the dry summer months. The entire region, comprising Barsana, Nandgaon, Govardhan, Gokul, and Mathura, is part of the larger Brajbhoomi.

Historians and religious texts claim over 1,000 kunds in the area, which provided water for irrigation, cattle and domestic use. Rapid urbanisation and negligence since independence have seen most of these water sources dry up and become garbage dumps that dot the villages. Many have been encroached upon by locals. As a result, the villagers now face acute water shortages during the summer months.

As a first step, the Braj Foundation—a non-profit organisation established in 2005—focused on reviving these water bodies with the help of young IIT graduates who helped identify their location. The next step was to get a team of architects, civil engineers, and graphic and landscape designers to prepare a development plan. “Everything was done with prior consultation of the village pradhans and the local administration. We had to give a written assurance that after completing the restoration work, the pond would be returned to the gram sabha,” says Narain.

The first kund on which work started was the Brahma Kund in the heart of Vrindavan. Earthmovers were brought to remove garbage and silt covering the water body. Once the desilting process was complete, water from a deep well rose to the surface. Landscape designers designed its octagonal ghats with steps leading down to the water body, and an eight-foot-tall statue of Brahma was placed in the centre. The Braj Foundation did not approach the state government for funds. The Piramal Foundation donated money for this restoration project.

Another restored water body was the Jai Kund, which falls under the jurisdiction of the Jait village and is located on the main Delhi-Agra National Highway. Villagers believe it is where Krishna killed the mythical python Aghasura and revere the site. The Jamnalal Bajaj Foundation and Morarka Foundation donated funds for this restoration.

Learning about the work done by the Braj Foundation, the villagers of Anore, led by the pradhan Mukesh Singh, approached Narain to restore Sankarshan Kund, located at the foothills of the Govardhan in Mathura. Singh says, “The restoration was so successful that lakhs of pilgrims visit our kund. Imagine the pride the entire village felt when the people of Telangana gifted us a 34-foot tall black granite deity of Sri Sankarshan,” said the pradhan.

Besides reviving 50 water bodies, the Braj Foundation helped restore a local forest and prepare a tourism master plan for the Uttar Pradesh state government. “The average restoration cost worked out between Rs 4 lakh to Rs 4 crore for each kund, depending on its size,” says Narain.

That is why he was shocked when within a week of coming to power in 2017, Chief Minister Adityanath’s government awarded a contract to revive just nine kunds for Rs 67 crore. “I informed the state government that we could do this work at a quarter of this cost,” Narain says. His open criticism led to the cancellation of the contract.

The second time Narain crossed swords with the state government was when the latter gave a contract worth thousands of crores to a Jaipur-based businessman to develop the tourism infrastructure of Mathura. “Once again, I publicly questioned why this contract was being given to an individual under investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation and Enforcement Directorate for misappropriation of funds,” says Narain.

The Uttar Pradesh government was forced to take the appointment back. The open criticism did not go down well with the state government, and a complaint was made before the National Green Tribunal (NGT), saying a private organisation, the Braj Foundation, could not be handed the task of re-greening local groves and renovating water bodies. In 2018, the NGT passed an order that said all the work done by the Braj Foundation be “demolished”. It ordered the state government to do all future restoration work on the kunds while the Forest Department would re-green the forests.

Narain went to court against this judgment and got a stay from the Supreme Court to ensure the restoration work was not undone. Then the state government created the Uttar Pradesh Braj Teerth Vikas Parishad and appointed retired IPS officer Shailaja K Mishra to oversee all the development activity in the region. This meant the Braj Foundation was out of the picture. “The Braj Foundation was elbowed out because the Yogi government saw Vineet Narain as being close to former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav,” alleges a retired state bureaucrat.
But for villagers in Braj, their joy and pride at having a beautiful garden and water body within their village complex have now been overtaken by a deep sense of loss. The 50 revived kunds are once again being reduced to little more than garbage dumps.

Dalveer Singh—the pradhan of Jait village when the restoration work took place—does not mince words when he says, “The state government has shown no interest in the maintenance or cleanliness of our kunds. The Braj Foundation made a boundary wall to stop encroachment and hired a security guard to ensure miscreants did not spoil the place. Gardeners were appointed to take care of the gardens created around each kund. The village bodies do not have the funds to maintain these places.”

Pradhan Mukesh Singh is equally bitter at this turn of events. “The present state of affairs can be gauged from the fact that some villagers are dumping their sewage waste into Sankarshan Kund. We have complained to the local bureaucrats who have taken no action,” he says. Narain feels embittered at how his team’s work was replaced by official agencies that seem to have little interest in restoring the heritage of Braj, especially when the region faces an acute water shortage crisis. But he hasn’t given up the fight. When the Braj Teerth Vikas Parishad mooted the idea of a Metro link between Mathura and Vrindavan, whose cost would run into several hundred crores, he spearheaded a campaign against it. Fortunately, the Union Ministry of Railways also found the project unviable.

The author is an independent journalist. The views are personal.