As one approaches Old Rajendra Nagar, located just 4.5km west of Connaught Place, it would appear that the existence of the entire neighbourhood is dependent on producing the next batch of civil servants for the country. It’s not just the billboards advertising preparatory institutes that litter the Karol Bagh Metro station, Rajendra Nagar’s nearest transit link, but the station itself is called Drishti IAS Karol Bagh Metro station as part of a co-branding initiative.
Below the elevated station, the chaotic Pusa Road looks even more disorderly with banners hanging over building façades. Enter Bada Bazaar Road, there is an entire ecosystem selling the great IAS dream. For most hours of the day, streets are full of aspirants and tutors moving in and out of coaching institutes.
Apart from the hundreds of these institutes that are located on the main road, the bylanes are densely packed with rental accommodations, paying guest facilities and dormitories for students. To cater to this community, there are permanent and makeshift businesses selling books on current affairs, optional subjects, and mess-style eateries and tiffin services selling a variety of regional food options. But since Saturday, the area has been packed with police in their usual khakis and the Rapid Action Force in their blue camouflage.
A small part of the Bada Bazaar Road has been cut off for normal traffic movement as protesters gather in relays over the death of three of their fellow IAS aspirants, which have justifiably dominated the headlines and news TV debates over the past week. The torrential downpour on Wednesday evening and the resultant inundation failed to deter them from their resolve. The rains, this time far worse than on the fateful night of July 27, brought similar experiences.
The same road got inundated in no time with water rising above the knee and basements filling up with the run-offs. Only this time, they were all, 35 of them, sealed by the civic agency in the aftermath of the tragedy. While Saturday’s situation caught attention due to the loss of young lives, it is symptomatic of the fallouts of inadequate and ad-hoc planning, design, and execution apparatus functioning in Indian cities, including the national Capital.
The issue also collectivised the students over problems troubling them primarily what they call an unholy nexus of brokers, landlords and these coaching institutes with the tacit support of authorities. The students and shopkeepers who have been here, some for more than five years, say the Bada Bazaar Road, on which the Rau’s IAS building stands, gets inundated even with moderate rain. Basements of the entire vicinity within a radius of half a kilometre would also get filled as seen in many low-lying areas of Delhi.
The fact that the area is flood-prone is not surprising. The Rajendra Nagar story Divided as Old and New by Shankar Road, Rajendra Nagar was one of the 16 rehabilitation colonies set up in the 1950s in Delhi by the first Union government to accommodate refugees coming from Sindh and Punjab regions of Pakistan following the Partition. The colonies – named after India’s first president Dr Rajendra Prasad – were carved out of the Central Ridge.
New Rajendra Nagar is situated on an elevation called the “pahari” by the residents, while Old Rajendra Nagar is located below. “While in New Rajendra Nagar, refugees were allotted houses built on 128 and 200 sq yard plots, in Old Rajendra Nagar, it was 50 or 80 sq yards,” said Arvind Mehta, a resident-activist living in New Rajendra Nagar since 1953. Just like most parts of Delhi, this neighbourhood is no longer reminiscent of how it looked in the 50s.
Old-timers say that a lot did not change for a long time with the area remaining primarily residential or mixed-land use with many private schools and government educational institutes coming up. It was only in the mid-90s, with the “builder” boom, the neighbourhood began to change, and quite rapidly so. The current proliferation of these coaching institutes in Old Rajendra Nagar started only around 2006 when the first such institute Vajirao started after the adjoining areas such as Mukherjee Nagar and Patel Nagar became saturated with institutes and a trend of out-of-state students lodging here for exams cemented.
Before that, locals said, these institutes did crop up but did not make a noticeable difference to the area. But as Kota emerged as the unofficial capital for students preparing for engineering entrance exams, Delhi became the hub of UPSC aspirants and areas such as Rajendra Nagar became the preferred destination thanks to its proximity to New Delhi Railway Station and symbolically — the Lutyens’ Delhi. This reason also contributed to the rise in rental demand as some aspirants also worked.
Landlords too realised that renting out to students on a per-room basis fetched more money compared to renting out floors to families. Students said that a single room with bare basic amenities can go up to ₹ 20,000 rent per month. Downside of a rapid boom AK Jain, former planning commissioner of the Delhi Development Authority, said noticing this opportunity, some owners starting with those having plots by the arterial roads joined hands and combined the small plots to house coaching institutes and other commercial activities.
When DDA was formulating the Master Plan 2021 in 2007, officials noted the socioeconomic change and relaxed floor area ratios leading to addition of floors and allowed mixed-use subject to conditions. Basements were allowed to function as commercial entities subject to safety and structural checks. But activists say until the last decade basements were not rampantly used for coaching or other functions that see an assembly of multiple persons.
Mehta said, “When even the newly built floors were also fully utilised, some landlords started renting out their basements for gyms, libraries and beauty parlours.” On this, Jain said, as part of the master plan even when basements were allowed, it had to be within FAR norms. “But there was no strict enforcement.
Overnight, many buildings changed their usage from residential to commercial without even paying conversion fees. MCD didn’t keep a check on illegal construction beyond the permissible G+4 norms.” He also said as part of the new master planning process, noting the increase in load, DDA recommended an overhaul of the drainage and sewage infrastructure in the area.
The last time the area, along with the rest of Delhi, had an upgrade in its drainage infrastructure was in 1980s. “But that could not account for the growth in population due to the liberalisation,” said R Srinivas, former country and town planner with the Union ministry of housing and urban affairs. However, these building norms were modified without noting the location specifics but based on broad city-wide trends.
KT Ravindran, formerly vice chairman of the Central Environmental Impact Assessment Committee and member of an advisory board for the United Nations Capital Master Plan, questioned whether basements should have been allowed to be built in the first place when the area is known to be low-lying. He said over the years, with more rainy years, the water table of some areas has risen, which has made the situation complex forcing the need for detailed bylaws that dictate which sort of land and location can accommodate what type of development. Further, he said that classes and libraries can have close to 40 persons at a single time, which should be treated as an assembly function in building use parlance.
“So, a library should never function in a single entry-exit basement.” Srinivas recounts despite DDA allowing commercial activities in its master plan, the Delhi high court in 2021 had observed that it should be disallowed over safety concerns. Further, residents said what worsens the waterlogging is the failure of civic agencies to maintain the already inadequate infrastructure.
They point that storm-water drains have not been desilted which compounds the urban flooding problem. Some said complaints to the police over illegal building modifications and illegal commercialisation had fallen on deaf ears. Neeraj Gupta, another lifelong resident-activist in the area, said the resident welfare associations (RWAs) have highlighted the issue of flooding since the time when Shiela Dikshit was Delhi chief minister.
He blamed the administration for allowing the area’s commercialisation without first creating the necessary civic infrastructure. Further, he said many residents were forced to move out of the area as it became unliveable due to the excessive footfalls. He said other than the issues of flooding, there are other issues like the hanging of overhead wires which are disasters waiting to happen.
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