A vision worth pursuing: Inner waterways for Kathmandu Valley

The lazy, jaundiced, malnourished baby Sun is consistently late at 'school'. 

The neighbourhood shopkeeper sets a small heap of waste consisting mostly of plastics on fire.
Acrid fumes from the diminishing heap mix with smog sweeping through the Nagarjun Hills, diminishing further the small pleasure of morning walk through the countryside. 

On cue, the lazy, jaundiced and malnourished baby called the Sun appears, drenched in the rains, perhaps taking the soot from the shopkeeper’s heap of waste as some ancient fire ritual dedicated to him. 

These days, the Sun looks like one of those schoolchildren, who always arrives late in class and is found snoozing all too often. Is it partying too much these days? Or is its chariot broken? 

The Sun’s chariot? Lemme do some explaining. 

As per scriptures, in those good ole days, the Sun used to thunder through the high skies, seated on its blazing chariot pulled by seven horses -- the planets. May be the chariot is broken these days, making the chief of the solar system consistently late. 

As I walk on, vehicles of all sorts rush past potholed roads. On some stretches, road construction/repair work is in progress. For our contractors and engineers, dedicated to national development like no one else, the rainy season is the perfect time to undertake construction/repair works full throttle. The coat of pitch applied on the road does not even last a season. So what? If it were to last several years, what will happen to the suppliers of construction materials, the contractors and the engineers? How will bureaucrats and politicians, both in the government and in the opposition, survive and thrive?

How does it feel: Traffic jam when you're already late

On the way to the office, I am caught in traffic jam yet again like fellow road users. We all fume at the congestion choking in the smoke and dust-filled atmosphere. We all look like bombs ticking to go off. 

Later in the day, it rains heavily, so much so that even a canal of sorts flowing close by is swollen and seems to be posing a formidable risk to our office! Thanks to the rain, the pungent smell coming from the open sewer has vanished. 

During a site visit to assess the damage from the rains, marooned four-wheelers look like floats waiting for passengers and making fun of the government’s promise to connect with India through waterways. How dare they do that?

Houses and informal settlements close to the river banks are at grave risk. There’s a considerable risk to life and property, thanks to lack of preparedness in an ill-planned city. Nonetheless, here’s hoping that the government does not go on sleep mode after cautioning people to stay alert by forecasting heavy rains in coming days, thinking its duty is over. 

The countryside looks beautiful, with gushing brooks and carpets of greens. It will be wrong to take the rains and the rivers as agents of destruction only. Year after year after year, swollen rivers deposit topsoil on their banks, maintaining fertility of the soil and turning the Kathmandu Valley into a rich food basket like the Nile and Indus valleys.  

Rivers flowing through the valley can be used as inner waterways.

Looking from the window shield while rushing past gushing rivers, I feel once again that it’s possible to operate boats and steamers on Manohara, Hanumante and Bagmati rivers round the year. That can perhaps be done by building dams for maintaining the level of water required to operate these vessels.  

Commuting to and from the office through inland waterways seems to be a wonderful idea, doesn’t it? Moreover, it can help revive the glory of the world famous Bagmati civilisation by offering pilgrimage to major shrines along the Bagmati civilisation route, including the Changunarayan Temple, Swayambhunath Stupa, Pashupatinath Temple, Guheshwori and the Chobhar Gorge.

Hope our urban planners find this vision worthy enough to turn into reality. 

Text and pictures: Devendra Gautam