Every day, during the monsoon season, Rakhi Kumari, 18, checks the water levels of the Yamuna river near her house in Delhi. Her family of five, which lives in jhuggis (huts) on the floodplains of the river, has entrusted her with this responsibility.
In early July, when the monsoon was already well under way, Rakhi took a 20-minute walk from her house to the riverside to check if the water level had crossed the danger mark. “The monsoon season is always alarming for us,” said Rakhi, who runs a vocational unit in the area and teaches children how to stitch clothes. “Every year, the floodwater inundates our houses. We have made marks on trees on the river bed. This helps us decide when to pick up our belongings and take them to an elevated area.”
The Yamuna floodplains span nearly 10,000 hectares of land. They are cleaved by the river, which flows for 52 kilometres across the National Capital Region (NCR). The silt deposited by the Yamuna, the longest tributary of the Ganga, sustains many khadars or urban agricultural settlements such as Rakhi’s. It enriches the soil and fosters crop production.
