Nirjesh Gautam
Nirjesh Gautam
People Beside Ecology: The Social Life of Dwarka Forest
People Beside Ecology: The Social Life of Dwarka Forest
People Beside Ecology: The Social Life of Dwarka Forest
Nirjesh Gautam
Photos courtesy of Nirjesh Gautam
Photos courtesy of Nirjesh Gautam
Nirjesh, is an independent researcher and writer exploring human-nature interactions in urban areas. His work focuses on overlooked green spaces, everyday encounters with biodiversity, and the politics of urban environments. He also experiments with art and storytelling to make ecological narratives more accessible to wider audiences.
Nirjesh, is an independent researcher and writer exploring human-nature interactions in urban areas. His work focuses on overlooked green spaces, everyday encounters with biodiversity, and the politics of urban environments. He also experiments with art and storytelling to make ecological narratives more accessible to wider audiences.
Nirjesh, is an independent researcher and writer exploring human-nature interactions in urban areas. His work focuses on overlooked green spaces, everyday encounters with biodiversity, and the politics of urban environments. He also experiments with art and storytelling to make ecological narratives more accessible to wider audiences.
Introduction
An island emerged in 1983, not in the sea, but around the under construction and dusty peripheries of Delhi. From the vantage point of this island, one could see only a vast ocean of development thrashing against its boundaries, the waves taking the form of highways, airports, expanding railways and apartment complexes. But this island was unlike any other, for it was not nature that arrived first—but people.
Under urban development policies that sought to restructure urban space in the capital, around 257 families were resettled very close to Indira Gandhi International Airport (1). These were working-class families, many from Dalit and Muslim communities, whose labour likely fed into the construction of Dwarka as it took shape. They arrived at a landscape stripped of basic amenities—without piped water, without proper roads—surrounded by the deafening noise of development that seemed to grow around them, but not with them.
Figure 1: Tucked between the roaring runways of an international airport and the endless hum of arterial highways, hemmed in on the remaining sides by the gated expressions of middle-class development, lies a small Harijan Basti. When I first began visiting this place, it felt like a distinct island—physically isolated, yet pulsating with a rhythm of its own.
In time, however, something unexpected happened. Beside this settlement, on the unmanaged land owned by the Indian Railways, nature began to reclaim space. What was once a dumping ground for construction waste slowly transformed into wild again. Today, the more than 120-acre expanse of what is known as Dwarka Forest defies easy classification: neither a deemed forest nor a city park, but a thriving patch of urban wilderness. Its fate now seems similarly uncertain—entangled in the pressures of development and the politics of who gets to claim nature in the city.
Today, both the forest and the Harijan Basti face mounting pressures. On one side, towering middle-class apartment complexes continue to expand; on the other, the metro and railway lines and airport runways inch closer. The city’s latest development plans have only intensified this squeeze. A new railway project is set to cut through the vicinity of the Basti, and large portions of the Dwarka Forest are slated to be cleared to make way for this infrastructure (2).
257 starting points. This is where the state’s promise of ‘resettlement’ ended. 257 households were shifted here, but two generations later, each unit shelters multiple families. A live document of the compressed histories of adjustments, and being made to fit into someone else’s plan.
With this looming threat, the city’s environmentalists and NGOs have turned their attention to the forest. Dwarka Forest has suddenly become visible—spoken of in terms of its biodiversity, its cooling potential, and the vital ecosystem services (3) it provides to the choking city. In a metropolis starved for breathable air and shade, this patch of green has become a symbol of what little is left, something to be salvaged.
Yet, amid this renewed environmental concern, an essential piece of the story remains untold:
Winds blew
Trees grew
Birds returned
Nilgai moved in
And people saw this happen!
Living Beside the Forest
Field visits in July 2025 revealed the nuanced, layered relationships between the forest and those living alongside it. Accompanied by Jyoti (name changed)—a local resident and environmental activist—I visited an area near the talab, a place where community members often gather to play cards and talk. There, we met individuals like Ramesh, Suresh and Prakash (names changed), who shared fragments of community history, scepticism toward state projects, and their quiet, enduring ties to the forest.
I asked whether they visited the forest.
“I don’t go there,” Ramesh replied, “but my wife does—every day. She goes to feed the dogs and fill water in the pots for them.”
He paused, then added, “There are many Nilgai there—it’s quite a forest.”
His words hinted at an emotional and ethical relationship with the forest’s non-human residents, maintained by everyday acts of care.
When I asked about the makeup of the neighbourhood—pointing to a nearby mosque and mentioning the Harijan Basti—he responded, “Some people from Shahabad Mohammadpur also live here. The resettlement wasn’t just for SC/ST groups. People from low income groups were also given flats.” His tone was matter-of-fact, but the statement pointed toward layered identities within the colony: caste, class and religion intersecting in everyday life.
Do people still collect fuelwood or timber from the forest? “We all use cylinders now,” Suresh said. “Nobody burns wood anymore.”
Shades of Aesthetics, Views and Use:
While driving into the Basti, it became immediately apparent that the settlement, though often seen as a singular community, contains subtle yet significant internal differences. The built environment itself reveals gradients of exclusion and economic diversity. At the entrance, I noticed worn-down, single-storeyed houses painted in vibrant hues of blue and pink, with neatly stacked fuelwood piled beside them.
Crossing the nallah, a shift occurs: taller, three-storeyed houses with small front-facing shops start to appear, hinting at relatively better economic standing. Further along, past the mosque, is yet another spatial transition—more organized housing accompanied by an open area, now used as parking by residents of the Harijan Basti.
These aesthetic transitions reflect deeper social and economic hierarchies etched into the landscape. Although often framed as a homogenous population, the basti is inhabited by people from different caste and community backgrounds—Dalits, Muslims, and some upper-caste groups. Each has their own histories, perceptions, and relationships with the adjacent forest.
What emerged most clearly from our group discussions and interviews was that the forest serves an everyday purpose often overlooked in formal conservation discourse. Its crisscrossing trails—etched by countless footsteps—speak of routine lives. It acts as a shortcut for domestic workers heading to early morning shifts, a resting spot where elderly men gather to talk and watch the day pass, and for some people, the area is used for grazing their cattle. For many, the forest is a refuge—offering cool respite in Delhi’s punishing summers, and gentle warmth during harsh winters. For others, it reminds them of landscapes in their native villages. At the same time, some see economic opportunity in its erasure: hoping that government or private projects on the forest land will bring employment opportunities.
In reality, it is a mixed-use space: a shortcut, a resting ground, a microclimate buffer, a livelihood supplement, and a site of memory. Its meaning is not fixed but shaped by where one lives, what one needs, and how one remembers. It breathes into the rhythms of their lives as a living extension of home.
Urban Nature and Environmental Narratives
Urban areas are sites of both ecological neglect and social marginalisation. Here, nature and disenfranchised communities coexist in overlooked ways, forming unique urban ecologies—often unnoticed and deliberately invisibilised by planners, scholars, and mainstream environmentalists. The expansion of railways is a case in point, where such relationships were again ignored.
During a group discussion, Jyoti explained the upcoming railway project to residents of the Harijan Basti. While many had seen signs of construction, few understood the direct consequences for their settlement. “It’s a government project—what can we do? They will do what they want to do. And there is no panchayat anymore,” said Ramesh, a long-time resident. He recalled how a proposed metro depot once faced resistance from Sector 21’s Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs), leading to its relocation. The message was clear: power, not process, dictates outcomes. Consultation is less a democratic right than a class-bound privilege.
A similar silence followed (punctuated only by the loud blare of a train horn from the nearby tracks) during a group discussion inside the Mosque. When asked whether anyone from the government had approached them, the quiet, collective shake of heads said it all. This pattern of exclusion is not incidental—it is structural.
This asymmetry is also reflected in the environmental discourse around Dwarka Forest. Residents of Harijan Basti and nearby areas have coexisted with the forest for decades and witnessed its slow transformation. Yet their voices are absent in petitions and environmental campaigns led by mainstream organisations such as Greenpeace, where ecology is presented in abstract, technical terms: ‘green lungs’.
In rural India, environmental resistance often emerges from communities whose lives and livelihoods are intimately tied to natural resources. Their struggles in some sense are foregrounded in the environmental narratives. In urban contexts, however, subaltern voices are routinely excluded. For instance, the protests following the Supreme Court’s recent decision on stray dogs reveal how the perspectives of marginalized communities who face immediate confrontations with these animals are routinely neglected.
What emerges instead is an expert-led discourse that detaches urban ecology from the very people who interact with it, reducing rich, socio-natural entanglements.
Take, for example, a widely circulated letter by Greenpeace addressed to the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF). The letter presents a compelling ecological case for the protection of Dwarka Forest, highlighting the presence of Schedule II wildlife like the Nilgai, whose movement has been obstructed by newly installed fencing. Photographs accompanying the appeal documents forest’s fauna and the creeping presence of construction debris and barricades— clear signs of ecological degradation.
Rightly, the letter frames Dwarka Forest as a vital part of Delhi’s urban ecological infrastructure—critical to climate regulation, biodiversity preservation, and public well-being. It connects local concerns to global crises like climate change, and calls for urgent, proactive environmental stewardship. Yet, despite the strength of this ecological argument, what remains missing is the voice of those whose lives are most entangled with this landscape.
Postcard: A closer look at the postcard reveals the haste in its making. The illustrated animal is clearly not a Nilgai, reflecting an urge to simply do away with the task.
The above postcard speaks fervently of the disrupted paths of Nilgai but remains silent on the equally disrupted paths of people. For residents of Harijan Basti and Shahabad Mohammadpur, this forest is a lived, traversed, and negotiated space. The trails are essential as they form the shortest link to the RWA colonies where many work as domestic workers, gardeners, and security staff. With the forest now fenced off, these workers must walk an additional 3–4 kilometres daily. This is a burden that lands heaviest on those already carrying the weight of economic precarity (4).
Ironically, some sections of the fencing have been left open—perhaps an unspoken concession to these everyday movements. These gaps are lapses in enforcement, exposing the friction between ecological governance and lived urban realities. In prioritizing the movement of wildlife over the mobility of working-class people, the dominant conservation narrative reproduces a hierarchy: where nature is protected at the expense of the marginalized human. It draws a line between who has the right to move freely and who must circumvent that right.
What remains absent is the recognition that these trails are equally significant to the people whose survival and dignity are intertwined with this landscape as much as they matter to Nilgais. While they may not articulate ecological value in the language of biodiversity indices or carbon sequestration, their everyday engagements with the forest are rich with meaning. Their relationship with the forest is embodied and quietly reciprocal.
In a country shaped by structural caste and class hierarchies, there is nothing neutral about space. In this light, the forest is a common space, layered with diverse meanings, conflicts, and claims. Any meaningful conservation effort must acknowledge this multiplicity of users and recognize plurality in defining environmental justice. For the people of Harijan Basti, Dwarka Forest is not only a friend—it can also turn into a foe, as history shows how space has played a critical role in the stigmatization of Dalits.
Flirting with the Cause of Nature
Mainstream environmental actors have amplified the ecological significance of the Dwarka Forest by emphasizing its role in sheltering urban biodiversity, acting as a green buffer against intensifying heat and pollution. Their petitions highlight disrupted wildlife mobility and the illegal dumping of demolition waste—urgent concerns that deserve public attention.
Yet for the economically privileged, environmentalism often becomes a flirtation—an occasional, symbolic engagement, detached from the harsh realities faced by the communities who live alongside these contested ecologies. Consider the following event poster which invites people to “Assemble to Save Dwarka Forest” on the 4th of May at DDA Park in Sector 22. On the surface, it appears part of the larger campaign to protect the forest. But a closer look reveals a quiet dissonance: the main activity is the painting and installation of 1,000 water bowls—not in the forest, but in “parks and colleges”.
This gesture raises difficult questions: What exactly is being saved, and how? How does this act confront the threats facing the forest—like fencing, habitat fragmentation, and institutional neglect? When campaigns prioritize optics or outreach over on-ground action, they risk turning environmentalism into performance, substituting meaningful resistance with symbolic acts. To truly defend urban forests like Dwarka, the focus must shift from bird bowls to broken policies.
There is something deeply unsettling about this divergence. The forest, which continues to face deforestation, fragmentation, and dumping of demolition waste, is not visually represented in the poster at all. There is no image of it, no map, no mention of what endangers it, or who uses it. The message gets diluted, and the urgency displaced. This is not to say that birds don’t need water. But what does that have to do with the contested forest land in Dwarka? The real struggle to protect that space from erasure is quietly backgrounded.
The forest becomes a symbolic placeholder, a convenient metaphor to frame a summer volunteer activity. The cause lends emotional weight, while the action proposed takes place elsewhere. There’s something performative about this gesture—an event invoking the forest’s name, but staged outside it.
This kind of visual and strategic disconnect reflects a common issue in contemporary urban environmental movements. Symbolic gestures often eclipse the gritty, site-specific work of resistance and repair. When campaigns blur such distinctions, they dilute public understanding of the actual issues and redirect energy away from systemic environmental challenges. We are left with a poster that appears to be about saving a forest, but doesn't even step into it, however, largely shared.
Consider the following images from a protest organised to save the Dwarka Forest. The event was framed around the "Right to Co-Exist"—a call for harmony among animals, the environment, birds, wildlife, forests and trees. But these categories, while evocative, were treated as mutually exclusive, rather than interconnected parts of a shared ecology. On the ground, however, the dominant tone of the protest leaned more towards advocating for the protection of dogs and promoting veganism, rather than engaging with the full spectrum of ecological or social justice. The flyer used to promote the protest featured a raised protest fist—a classic symbol of resistance—placed beside images of a woman, Nilgais, and even giraffes. It claimed to speak for social and climate justice, yet noticeably, no one from the nearby Harijan Basti was present or represented or even invited.
Dalit Ecologies and the Myth of the Green Lung
The emerging scholarship on Dalit Ecologies unsettles the notion that environmentalism is the domain of the privileged. These ecologies are shaped by necessity, resilience and survival. They manifest in the everyday: collecting herbs for healing, feeding stray animals, walking shaded trails to avoid heatstroke, or simply pausing for a moment’s reprieve from the relentless pace of the city.
In Harijan Basti, such ecologies unfold quietly but unmistakably. Women pass through the forest to shorten their routes, conserving time and energy. Children name the Nilgai they’ve seen, and people speak of birds returning with the change of seasons. These interactions are acts of adaptation. In them lies a form of environmental stewardship that is relational (5).
Unlike the tidy, apolitical images of ‘green lungs’ featured in master plans or conservation campaigns, the forest here breathes a different kind of life. The human-nature engagement of negotiation, improvisation and care offers an alternative imagination of urban nature—one that is inhabited, messy, and entangled with caste, labour, and memory.
Dwarka Forest is more than a ‘green lung’ for Delhi. It is a lived commons where society and ecology are inseparable. But this intertwined life stands threatened. The popular narrative of ecological damage foreshadows displacement, fragmentation and erasure. For communities like those in Harijan Basti, it is a neighbour, a witness to their daily lives—sometimes even a quiet companion during moments of fatigue or grief. What is truly at stake is the collective memory and meanings associated with this land.
Toward Unconventional Ecologies
Urban environmentalism in India stands at a moral and political juncture. If it continues to privilege technocratic expertise while excluding histories of habitation and dispossession, it will reproduce the very inequalities it claims to resist. Conservation cannot be separated from caste, class, and lived experience.
The struggle for Dwarka Forest invites us to imagine an inclusive, grounded environmentalism—one that listens before it plans, that begins with those who live beside the forest, who know its moods and seasons, who have shaped and been shaped by it. Their stories deepen the ecological cause and remind us that caring for nature also means caring for the people bound to it.
In the end, the question is not only what we are saving, but for whom, and by what means.
Figure 3: Environmental actors decide which image gets to see the light—and which remains in the dark.
In one frame, nilgais retreat behind locked gates; in another, a worker washes utensils beside barricades and stagnant water. Both are fenced out—of land, of decisions, and of visibility. Whose survival gets framed, and whose is forgotten? (Photographs: SDF)
Perhaps the most difficult, yet urgent, first step for mainstream environmental actors is to stop regurgitating abstraction, and start listening with intent—to account for the enduring intersections of caste, class and ecology that still shape survival in India.
Notes:
1. This was part of the relocation and resettlement of slum-dwelling communities in the name of building a “world-class city.” Since the 1950s, various slum clearance programmes have been implemented in Delhi under the Slum Areas (Improvement and Clearance) Act of 1956 and the Master Plan of Delhi (1962).
As Dupont (2008) notes, “The extent of slum demolitions in Delhi is difficult to assess with accuracy as no updating of the numbers of JJ clusters and JJ families has been provided by the slum and JJ department of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), which results in inconsistency in the official data published.” The last comprehensive list, detailing the number of jhuggi families in each cluster for every zone of the city, dates back to 1994. Secondary sources provide little information on the relocation, but testimonies and cross-validation point to the year 1983.
2. Ecosystem services are the benefits which human beings can directly and indirectly derive from nature. There are various types of services such as provisioning or regulating. For instance, food or fuel wood are classified as former, while air purification is a regulating service. Read more here.
3. The Dwarka Forest area, once agricultural land, was acquired by the Delhi Development Authority from Shahabad Muhammadpur villagers in the 1960s, and later handed over to the Ministry of Railways in 2008 under the Delhi Master Plan 2021. Read more here and here.
4. What constitutes climate environmentalism in the context of urban areas can analogously be understood by what Mukul Sharma writes in his book: “the daily existence of Dalits—their labour, place, occupation, discrimination, violence, and the intensity of living in hard and hostile situations—are the real issues of Dalit climate environmentalism.”
5. In the context of Dwarka Forest, a few questions need to be self-critically reflected upon by conservation groups. Does their claim of the forest acknowledge its use by the people of Harijan Basti? Once it becomes a deemed forest, what happens to access—be it trails or even fuelwood collection?
Mukul Sharma writes in Dalit Ecologies: “Earth and earthly environments host Dalit lives. Despite the devaluation of material and human life, the earth’s physicality and materiality embodies habitability, diversity, freedom and change, offering unlimited promises for Dalits.” Yet such socio-ecological interactions remain unacknowledged and absent from current environmental discourse.
This leads to a clear conflict: a generalized, universal idea of ‘nature’ that shies away from ground realities. In the case of Dwarka Forest, the socially embedded character of nature is ignored. The deemed forest category might bring a sense of protection, but without ensuring access to trails or fuelwood, it risks worsening the working conditions of people in Harijan Basti.
All of this points to the social generalization of climate change. Caste-neutral approaches to environmental justice pave the way for climate casteism. To move beyond this, environmental politics must integrate the unequal distribution of risks and benefits.
Acknowledgement:
My sincere gratitude to Dr. Budhaditya Das, whose insights encouraged me to think beyond species and spaces, and to highlight people’s lived realities into the heart of this story.
Introduction
An island emerged in 1983, not in the sea, but around the under construction and dusty peripheries of Delhi. From the vantage point of this island, one could see only a vast ocean of development thrashing against its boundaries, the waves taking the form of highways, airports, expanding railways and apartment complexes. But this island was unlike any other, for it was not nature that arrived first—but people.
Under urban development policies that sought to restructure urban space in the capital, around 257 families were resettled very close to Indira Gandhi International Airport (1). These were working-class families, many from Dalit and Muslim communities, whose labour likely fed into the construction of Dwarka as it took shape. They arrived at a landscape stripped of basic amenities—without piped water, without proper roads—surrounded by the deafening noise of development that seemed to grow around them, but not with them.
Figure 1: Tucked between the roaring runways of an international airport and the endless hum of arterial highways, hemmed in on the remaining sides by the gated expressions of middle-class development, lies a small Harijan Basti. When I first began visiting this place, it felt like a distinct island—physically isolated, yet pulsating with a rhythm of its own.
In time, however, something unexpected happened. Beside this settlement, on the unmanaged land owned by the Indian Railways, nature began to reclaim space. What was once a dumping ground for construction waste slowly transformed into wild again. Today, the more than 120-acre expanse of what is known as Dwarka Forest defies easy classification: neither a deemed forest nor a city park, but a thriving patch of urban wilderness. Its fate now seems similarly uncertain—entangled in the pressures of development and the politics of who gets to claim nature in the city.
Today, both the forest and the Harijan Basti face mounting pressures. On one side, towering middle-class apartment complexes continue to expand; on the other, the metro and railway lines and airport runways inch closer. The city’s latest development plans have only intensified this squeeze. A new railway project is set to cut through the vicinity of the Basti, and large portions of the Dwarka Forest are slated to be cleared to make way for this infrastructure (2).
257 starting points. This is where the state’s promise of ‘resettlement’ ended. 257 households were shifted here, but two generations later, each unit shelters multiple families. A live document of the compressed histories of adjustments, and being made to fit into someone else’s plan.
With this looming threat, the city’s environmentalists and NGOs have turned their attention to the forest. Dwarka Forest has suddenly become visible—spoken of in terms of its biodiversity, its cooling potential, and the vital ecosystem services (3) it provides to the choking city. In a metropolis starved for breathable air and shade, this patch of green has become a symbol of what little is left, something to be salvaged.
Yet, amid this renewed environmental concern, an essential piece of the story remains untold:
Winds blew
Trees grew
Birds returned
Nilgai moved in
And people saw this happen!
Living Beside the Forest
Field visits in July 2025 revealed the nuanced, layered relationships between the forest and those living alongside it. Accompanied by Jyoti (name changed)—a local resident and environmental activist—I visited an area near the talab, a place where community members often gather to play cards and talk. There, we met individuals like Ramesh, Suresh and Prakash (names changed), who shared fragments of community history, scepticism toward state projects, and their quiet, enduring ties to the forest.
I asked whether they visited the forest.
“I don’t go there,” Ramesh replied, “but my wife does—every day. She goes to feed the dogs and fill water in the pots for them.”
He paused, then added, “There are many Nilgai there—it’s quite a forest.”
His words hinted at an emotional and ethical relationship with the forest’s non-human residents, maintained by everyday acts of care.
When I asked about the makeup of the neighbourhood—pointing to a nearby mosque and mentioning the Harijan Basti—he responded, “Some people from Shahabad Mohammadpur also live here. The resettlement wasn’t just for SC/ST groups. People from low income groups were also given flats.” His tone was matter-of-fact, but the statement pointed toward layered identities within the colony: caste, class and religion intersecting in everyday life.
Do people still collect fuelwood or timber from the forest? “We all use cylinders now,” Suresh said. “Nobody burns wood anymore.”
Shades of Aesthetics, Views and Use:
While driving into the Basti, it became immediately apparent that the settlement, though often seen as a singular community, contains subtle yet significant internal differences. The built environment itself reveals gradients of exclusion and economic diversity. At the entrance, I noticed worn-down, single-storeyed houses painted in vibrant hues of blue and pink, with neatly stacked fuelwood piled beside them.
Crossing the nallah, a shift occurs: taller, three-storeyed houses with small front-facing shops start to appear, hinting at relatively better economic standing. Further along, past the mosque, is yet another spatial transition—more organized housing accompanied by an open area, now used as parking by residents of the Harijan Basti.
These aesthetic transitions reflect deeper social and economic hierarchies etched into the landscape. Although often framed as a homogenous population, the basti is inhabited by people from different caste and community backgrounds—Dalits, Muslims, and some upper-caste groups. Each has their own histories, perceptions, and relationships with the adjacent forest.
What emerged most clearly from our group discussions and interviews was that the forest serves an everyday purpose often overlooked in formal conservation discourse. Its crisscrossing trails—etched by countless footsteps—speak of routine lives. It acts as a shortcut for domestic workers heading to early morning shifts, a resting spot where elderly men gather to talk and watch the day pass, and for some people, the area is used for grazing their cattle. For many, the forest is a refuge—offering cool respite in Delhi’s punishing summers, and gentle warmth during harsh winters. For others, it reminds them of landscapes in their native villages. At the same time, some see economic opportunity in its erasure: hoping that government or private projects on the forest land will bring employment opportunities.
In reality, it is a mixed-use space: a shortcut, a resting ground, a microclimate buffer, a livelihood supplement, and a site of memory. Its meaning is not fixed but shaped by where one lives, what one needs, and how one remembers. It breathes into the rhythms of their lives as a living extension of home.
Urban Nature and Environmental Narratives
Urban areas are sites of both ecological neglect and social marginalisation. Here, nature and disenfranchised communities coexist in overlooked ways, forming unique urban ecologies—often unnoticed and deliberately invisibilised by planners, scholars, and mainstream environmentalists. The expansion of railways is a case in point, where such relationships were again ignored.
During a group discussion, Jyoti explained the upcoming railway project to residents of the Harijan Basti. While many had seen signs of construction, few understood the direct consequences for their settlement. “It’s a government project—what can we do? They will do what they want to do. And there is no panchayat anymore,” said Ramesh, a long-time resident. He recalled how a proposed metro depot once faced resistance from Sector 21’s Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs), leading to its relocation. The message was clear: power, not process, dictates outcomes. Consultation is less a democratic right than a class-bound privilege.
A similar silence followed (punctuated only by the loud blare of a train horn from the nearby tracks) during a group discussion inside the Mosque. When asked whether anyone from the government had approached them, the quiet, collective shake of heads said it all. This pattern of exclusion is not incidental—it is structural.
This asymmetry is also reflected in the environmental discourse around Dwarka Forest. Residents of Harijan Basti and nearby areas have coexisted with the forest for decades and witnessed its slow transformation. Yet their voices are absent in petitions and environmental campaigns led by mainstream organisations such as Greenpeace, where ecology is presented in abstract, technical terms: ‘green lungs’.
In rural India, environmental resistance often emerges from communities whose lives and livelihoods are intimately tied to natural resources. Their struggles in some sense are foregrounded in the environmental narratives. In urban contexts, however, subaltern voices are routinely excluded. For instance, the protests following the Supreme Court’s recent decision on stray dogs reveal how the perspectives of marginalized communities who face immediate confrontations with these animals are routinely neglected.
What emerges instead is an expert-led discourse that detaches urban ecology from the very people who interact with it, reducing rich, socio-natural entanglements.
Take, for example, a widely circulated letter by Greenpeace addressed to the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF). The letter presents a compelling ecological case for the protection of Dwarka Forest, highlighting the presence of Schedule II wildlife like the Nilgai, whose movement has been obstructed by newly installed fencing. Photographs accompanying the appeal documents forest’s fauna and the creeping presence of construction debris and barricades— clear signs of ecological degradation.
Rightly, the letter frames Dwarka Forest as a vital part of Delhi’s urban ecological infrastructure—critical to climate regulation, biodiversity preservation, and public well-being. It connects local concerns to global crises like climate change, and calls for urgent, proactive environmental stewardship. Yet, despite the strength of this ecological argument, what remains missing is the voice of those whose lives are most entangled with this landscape.
Postcard: A closer look at the postcard reveals the haste in its making. The illustrated animal is clearly not a Nilgai, reflecting an urge to simply do away with the task.
The above postcard speaks fervently of the disrupted paths of Nilgai but remains silent on the equally disrupted paths of people. For residents of Harijan Basti and Shahabad Mohammadpur, this forest is a lived, traversed, and negotiated space. The trails are essential as they form the shortest link to the RWA colonies where many work as domestic workers, gardeners, and security staff. With the forest now fenced off, these workers must walk an additional 3–4 kilometres daily. This is a burden that lands heaviest on those already carrying the weight of economic precarity (4).
Ironically, some sections of the fencing have been left open—perhaps an unspoken concession to these everyday movements. These gaps are lapses in enforcement, exposing the friction between ecological governance and lived urban realities. In prioritizing the movement of wildlife over the mobility of working-class people, the dominant conservation narrative reproduces a hierarchy: where nature is protected at the expense of the marginalized human. It draws a line between who has the right to move freely and who must circumvent that right.
What remains absent is the recognition that these trails are equally significant to the people whose survival and dignity are intertwined with this landscape as much as they matter to Nilgais. While they may not articulate ecological value in the language of biodiversity indices or carbon sequestration, their everyday engagements with the forest are rich with meaning. Their relationship with the forest is embodied and quietly reciprocal.
In a country shaped by structural caste and class hierarchies, there is nothing neutral about space. In this light, the forest is a common space, layered with diverse meanings, conflicts, and claims. Any meaningful conservation effort must acknowledge this multiplicity of users and recognize plurality in defining environmental justice. For the people of Harijan Basti, Dwarka Forest is not only a friend—it can also turn into a foe, as history shows how space has played a critical role in the stigmatization of Dalits.
Flirting with the Cause of Nature
Mainstream environmental actors have amplified the ecological significance of the Dwarka Forest by emphasizing its role in sheltering urban biodiversity, acting as a green buffer against intensifying heat and pollution. Their petitions highlight disrupted wildlife mobility and the illegal dumping of demolition waste—urgent concerns that deserve public attention.
Yet for the economically privileged, environmentalism often becomes a flirtation—an occasional, symbolic engagement, detached from the harsh realities faced by the communities who live alongside these contested ecologies. Consider the following event poster which invites people to “Assemble to Save Dwarka Forest” on the 4th of May at DDA Park in Sector 22. On the surface, it appears part of the larger campaign to protect the forest. But a closer look reveals a quiet dissonance: the main activity is the painting and installation of 1,000 water bowls—not in the forest, but in “parks and colleges”.
This gesture raises difficult questions: What exactly is being saved, and how? How does this act confront the threats facing the forest—like fencing, habitat fragmentation, and institutional neglect? When campaigns prioritize optics or outreach over on-ground action, they risk turning environmentalism into performance, substituting meaningful resistance with symbolic acts. To truly defend urban forests like Dwarka, the focus must shift from bird bowls to broken policies.
There is something deeply unsettling about this divergence. The forest, which continues to face deforestation, fragmentation, and dumping of demolition waste, is not visually represented in the poster at all. There is no image of it, no map, no mention of what endangers it, or who uses it. The message gets diluted, and the urgency displaced. This is not to say that birds don’t need water. But what does that have to do with the contested forest land in Dwarka? The real struggle to protect that space from erasure is quietly backgrounded.
The forest becomes a symbolic placeholder, a convenient metaphor to frame a summer volunteer activity. The cause lends emotional weight, while the action proposed takes place elsewhere. There’s something performative about this gesture—an event invoking the forest’s name, but staged outside it.
This kind of visual and strategic disconnect reflects a common issue in contemporary urban environmental movements. Symbolic gestures often eclipse the gritty, site-specific work of resistance and repair. When campaigns blur such distinctions, they dilute public understanding of the actual issues and redirect energy away from systemic environmental challenges. We are left with a poster that appears to be about saving a forest, but doesn't even step into it, however, largely shared.
Consider the following images from a protest organised to save the Dwarka Forest. The event was framed around the "Right to Co-Exist"—a call for harmony among animals, the environment, birds, wildlife, forests and trees. But these categories, while evocative, were treated as mutually exclusive, rather than interconnected parts of a shared ecology. On the ground, however, the dominant tone of the protest leaned more towards advocating for the protection of dogs and promoting veganism, rather than engaging with the full spectrum of ecological or social justice. The flyer used to promote the protest featured a raised protest fist—a classic symbol of resistance—placed beside images of a woman, Nilgais, and even giraffes. It claimed to speak for social and climate justice, yet noticeably, no one from the nearby Harijan Basti was present or represented or even invited.
Dalit Ecologies and the Myth of the Green Lung
The emerging scholarship on Dalit Ecologies unsettles the notion that environmentalism is the domain of the privileged. These ecologies are shaped by necessity, resilience and survival. They manifest in the everyday: collecting herbs for healing, feeding stray animals, walking shaded trails to avoid heatstroke, or simply pausing for a moment’s reprieve from the relentless pace of the city.
In Harijan Basti, such ecologies unfold quietly but unmistakably. Women pass through the forest to shorten their routes, conserving time and energy. Children name the Nilgai they’ve seen, and people speak of birds returning with the change of seasons. These interactions are acts of adaptation. In them lies a form of environmental stewardship that is relational (5).
Unlike the tidy, apolitical images of ‘green lungs’ featured in master plans or conservation campaigns, the forest here breathes a different kind of life. The human-nature engagement of negotiation, improvisation and care offers an alternative imagination of urban nature—one that is inhabited, messy, and entangled with caste, labour, and memory.
Dwarka Forest is more than a ‘green lung’ for Delhi. It is a lived commons where society and ecology are inseparable. But this intertwined life stands threatened. The popular narrative of ecological damage foreshadows displacement, fragmentation and erasure. For communities like those in Harijan Basti, it is a neighbour, a witness to their daily lives—sometimes even a quiet companion during moments of fatigue or grief. What is truly at stake is the collective memory and meanings associated with this land.
Toward Unconventional Ecologies
Urban environmentalism in India stands at a moral and political juncture. If it continues to privilege technocratic expertise while excluding histories of habitation and dispossession, it will reproduce the very inequalities it claims to resist. Conservation cannot be separated from caste, class, and lived experience.
The struggle for Dwarka Forest invites us to imagine an inclusive, grounded environmentalism—one that listens before it plans, that begins with those who live beside the forest, who know its moods and seasons, who have shaped and been shaped by it. Their stories deepen the ecological cause and remind us that caring for nature also means caring for the people bound to it.
In the end, the question is not only what we are saving, but for whom, and by what means.
Figure 3: Environmental actors decide which image gets to see the light—and which remains in the dark.
In one frame, nilgais retreat behind locked gates; in another, a worker washes utensils beside barricades and stagnant water. Both are fenced out—of land, of decisions, and of visibility. Whose survival gets framed, and whose is forgotten? (Photographs: SDF)
Perhaps the most difficult, yet urgent, first step for mainstream environmental actors is to stop regurgitating abstraction, and start listening with intent—to account for the enduring intersections of caste, class and ecology that still shape survival in India.
Notes:
1. This was part of the relocation and resettlement of slum-dwelling communities in the name of building a “world-class city.” Since the 1950s, various slum clearance programmes have been implemented in Delhi under the Slum Areas (Improvement and Clearance) Act of 1956 and the Master Plan of Delhi (1962).
As Dupont (2008) notes, “The extent of slum demolitions in Delhi is difficult to assess with accuracy as no updating of the numbers of JJ clusters and JJ families has been provided by the slum and JJ department of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), which results in inconsistency in the official data published.” The last comprehensive list, detailing the number of jhuggi families in each cluster for every zone of the city, dates back to 1994. Secondary sources provide little information on the relocation, but testimonies and cross-validation point to the year 1983.
2. Ecosystem services are the benefits which human beings can directly and indirectly derive from nature. There are various types of services such as provisioning or regulating. For instance, food or fuel wood are classified as former, while air purification is a regulating service. Read more here.
3. The Dwarka Forest area, once agricultural land, was acquired by the Delhi Development Authority from Shahabad Muhammadpur villagers in the 1960s, and later handed over to the Ministry of Railways in 2008 under the Delhi Master Plan 2021. Read more here and here.
4. What constitutes climate environmentalism in the context of urban areas can analogously be understood by what Mukul Sharma writes in his book: “the daily existence of Dalits—their labour, place, occupation, discrimination, violence, and the intensity of living in hard and hostile situations—are the real issues of Dalit climate environmentalism.”
5. In the context of Dwarka Forest, a few questions need to be self-critically reflected upon by conservation groups. Does their claim of the forest acknowledge its use by the people of Harijan Basti? Once it becomes a deemed forest, what happens to access—be it trails or even fuelwood collection?
Mukul Sharma writes in Dalit Ecologies: “Earth and earthly environments host Dalit lives. Despite the devaluation of material and human life, the earth’s physicality and materiality embodies habitability, diversity, freedom and change, offering unlimited promises for Dalits.” Yet such socio-ecological interactions remain unacknowledged and absent from current environmental discourse.
This leads to a clear conflict: a generalized, universal idea of ‘nature’ that shies away from ground realities. In the case of Dwarka Forest, the socially embedded character of nature is ignored. The deemed forest category might bring a sense of protection, but without ensuring access to trails or fuelwood, it risks worsening the working conditions of people in Harijan Basti.
All of this points to the social generalization of climate change. Caste-neutral approaches to environmental justice pave the way for climate casteism. To move beyond this, environmental politics must integrate the unequal distribution of risks and benefits.
Acknowledgement:
My sincere gratitude to Dr. Budhaditya Das, whose insights encouraged me to think beyond species and spaces, and to highlight people’s lived realities into the heart of this story.
Introduction
An island emerged in 1983, not in the sea, but around the under construction and dusty peripheries of Delhi. From the vantage point of this island, one could see only a vast ocean of development thrashing against its boundaries, the waves taking the form of highways, airports, expanding railways and apartment complexes. But this island was unlike any other, for it was not nature that arrived first—but people.
Under urban development policies that sought to restructure urban space in the capital, around 257 families were resettled very close to Indira Gandhi International Airport (1). These were working-class families, many from Dalit and Muslim communities, whose labour likely fed into the construction of Dwarka as it took shape. They arrived at a landscape stripped of basic amenities—without piped water, without proper roads—surrounded by the deafening noise of development that seemed to grow around them, but not with them.
Figure 1: Tucked between the roaring runways of an international airport and the endless hum of arterial highways, hemmed in on the remaining sides by the gated expressions of middle-class development, lies a small Harijan Basti. When I first began visiting this place, it felt like a distinct island—physically isolated, yet pulsating with a rhythm of its own.
In time, however, something unexpected happened. Beside this settlement, on the unmanaged land owned by the Indian Railways, nature began to reclaim space. What was once a dumping ground for construction waste slowly transformed into wild again. Today, the more than 120-acre expanse of what is known as Dwarka Forest defies easy classification: neither a deemed forest nor a city park, but a thriving patch of urban wilderness. Its fate now seems similarly uncertain—entangled in the pressures of development and the politics of who gets to claim nature in the city.
Today, both the forest and the Harijan Basti face mounting pressures. On one side, towering middle-class apartment complexes continue to expand; on the other, the metro and railway lines and airport runways inch closer. The city’s latest development plans have only intensified this squeeze. A new railway project is set to cut through the vicinity of the Basti, and large portions of the Dwarka Forest are slated to be cleared to make way for this infrastructure (2).
257 starting points. This is where the state’s promise of ‘resettlement’ ended. 257 households were shifted here, but two generations later, each unit shelters multiple families. A live document of the compressed histories of adjustments, and being made to fit into someone else’s plan.
With this looming threat, the city’s environmentalists and NGOs have turned their attention to the forest. Dwarka Forest has suddenly become visible—spoken of in terms of its biodiversity, its cooling potential, and the vital ecosystem services (3) it provides to the choking city. In a metropolis starved for breathable air and shade, this patch of green has become a symbol of what little is left, something to be salvaged.
Yet, amid this renewed environmental concern, an essential piece of the story remains untold:
Winds blew
Trees grew
Birds returned
Nilgai moved in
And people saw this happen!
Living Beside the Forest
Field visits in July 2025 revealed the nuanced, layered relationships between the forest and those living alongside it. Accompanied by Jyoti (name changed)—a local resident and environmental activist—I visited an area near the talab, a place where community members often gather to play cards and talk. There, we met individuals like Ramesh, Suresh and Prakash (names changed), who shared fragments of community history, scepticism toward state projects, and their quiet, enduring ties to the forest.
I asked whether they visited the forest.
“I don’t go there,” Ramesh replied, “but my wife does—every day. She goes to feed the dogs and fill water in the pots for them.”
He paused, then added, “There are many Nilgai there—it’s quite a forest.”
His words hinted at an emotional and ethical relationship with the forest’s non-human residents, maintained by everyday acts of care.
When I asked about the makeup of the neighbourhood—pointing to a nearby mosque and mentioning the Harijan Basti—he responded, “Some people from Shahabad Mohammadpur also live here. The resettlement wasn’t just for SC/ST groups. People from low income groups were also given flats.” His tone was matter-of-fact, but the statement pointed toward layered identities within the colony: caste, class and religion intersecting in everyday life.
Do people still collect fuelwood or timber from the forest? “We all use cylinders now,” Suresh said. “Nobody burns wood anymore.”
Shades of Aesthetics, Views and Use:
While driving into the Basti, it became immediately apparent that the settlement, though often seen as a singular community, contains subtle yet significant internal differences. The built environment itself reveals gradients of exclusion and economic diversity. At the entrance, I noticed worn-down, single-storeyed houses painted in vibrant hues of blue and pink, with neatly stacked fuelwood piled beside them.
Crossing the nallah, a shift occurs: taller, three-storeyed houses with small front-facing shops start to appear, hinting at relatively better economic standing. Further along, past the mosque, is yet another spatial transition—more organized housing accompanied by an open area, now used as parking by residents of the Harijan Basti.
These aesthetic transitions reflect deeper social and economic hierarchies etched into the landscape. Although often framed as a homogenous population, the basti is inhabited by people from different caste and community backgrounds—Dalits, Muslims, and some upper-caste groups. Each has their own histories, perceptions, and relationships with the adjacent forest.
What emerged most clearly from our group discussions and interviews was that the forest serves an everyday purpose often overlooked in formal conservation discourse. Its crisscrossing trails—etched by countless footsteps—speak of routine lives. It acts as a shortcut for domestic workers heading to early morning shifts, a resting spot where elderly men gather to talk and watch the day pass, and for some people, the area is used for grazing their cattle. For many, the forest is a refuge—offering cool respite in Delhi’s punishing summers, and gentle warmth during harsh winters. For others, it reminds them of landscapes in their native villages. At the same time, some see economic opportunity in its erasure: hoping that government or private projects on the forest land will bring employment opportunities.
In reality, it is a mixed-use space: a shortcut, a resting ground, a microclimate buffer, a livelihood supplement, and a site of memory. Its meaning is not fixed but shaped by where one lives, what one needs, and how one remembers. It breathes into the rhythms of their lives as a living extension of home.
Urban Nature and Environmental Narratives
Urban areas are sites of both ecological neglect and social marginalisation. Here, nature and disenfranchised communities coexist in overlooked ways, forming unique urban ecologies—often unnoticed and deliberately invisibilised by planners, scholars, and mainstream environmentalists. The expansion of railways is a case in point, where such relationships were again ignored.
During a group discussion, Jyoti explained the upcoming railway project to residents of the Harijan Basti. While many had seen signs of construction, few understood the direct consequences for their settlement. “It’s a government project—what can we do? They will do what they want to do. And there is no panchayat anymore,” said Ramesh, a long-time resident. He recalled how a proposed metro depot once faced resistance from Sector 21’s Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs), leading to its relocation. The message was clear: power, not process, dictates outcomes. Consultation is less a democratic right than a class-bound privilege.
A similar silence followed (punctuated only by the loud blare of a train horn from the nearby tracks) during a group discussion inside the Mosque. When asked whether anyone from the government had approached them, the quiet, collective shake of heads said it all. This pattern of exclusion is not incidental—it is structural.
This asymmetry is also reflected in the environmental discourse around Dwarka Forest. Residents of Harijan Basti and nearby areas have coexisted with the forest for decades and witnessed its slow transformation. Yet their voices are absent in petitions and environmental campaigns led by mainstream organisations such as Greenpeace, where ecology is presented in abstract, technical terms: ‘green lungs’.
In rural India, environmental resistance often emerges from communities whose lives and livelihoods are intimately tied to natural resources. Their struggles in some sense are foregrounded in the environmental narratives. In urban contexts, however, subaltern voices are routinely excluded. For instance, the protests following the Supreme Court’s recent decision on stray dogs reveal how the perspectives of marginalized communities who face immediate confrontations with these animals are routinely neglected.
What emerges instead is an expert-led discourse that detaches urban ecology from the very people who interact with it, reducing rich, socio-natural entanglements.
Take, for example, a widely circulated letter by Greenpeace addressed to the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF). The letter presents a compelling ecological case for the protection of Dwarka Forest, highlighting the presence of Schedule II wildlife like the Nilgai, whose movement has been obstructed by newly installed fencing. Photographs accompanying the appeal documents forest’s fauna and the creeping presence of construction debris and barricades— clear signs of ecological degradation.
Rightly, the letter frames Dwarka Forest as a vital part of Delhi’s urban ecological infrastructure—critical to climate regulation, biodiversity preservation, and public well-being. It connects local concerns to global crises like climate change, and calls for urgent, proactive environmental stewardship. Yet, despite the strength of this ecological argument, what remains missing is the voice of those whose lives are most entangled with this landscape.
Postcard: A closer look at the postcard reveals the haste in its making. The illustrated animal is clearly not a Nilgai, reflecting an urge to simply do away with the task.
The above postcard speaks fervently of the disrupted paths of Nilgai but remains silent on the equally disrupted paths of people. For residents of Harijan Basti and Shahabad Mohammadpur, this forest is a lived, traversed, and negotiated space. The trails are essential as they form the shortest link to the RWA colonies where many work as domestic workers, gardeners, and security staff. With the forest now fenced off, these workers must walk an additional 3–4 kilometres daily. This is a burden that lands heaviest on those already carrying the weight of economic precarity (4).
Ironically, some sections of the fencing have been left open—perhaps an unspoken concession to these everyday movements. These gaps are lapses in enforcement, exposing the friction between ecological governance and lived urban realities. In prioritizing the movement of wildlife over the mobility of working-class people, the dominant conservation narrative reproduces a hierarchy: where nature is protected at the expense of the marginalized human. It draws a line between who has the right to move freely and who must circumvent that right.
What remains absent is the recognition that these trails are equally significant to the people whose survival and dignity are intertwined with this landscape as much as they matter to Nilgais. While they may not articulate ecological value in the language of biodiversity indices or carbon sequestration, their everyday engagements with the forest are rich with meaning. Their relationship with the forest is embodied and quietly reciprocal.
In a country shaped by structural caste and class hierarchies, there is nothing neutral about space. In this light, the forest is a common space, layered with diverse meanings, conflicts, and claims. Any meaningful conservation effort must acknowledge this multiplicity of users and recognize plurality in defining environmental justice. For the people of Harijan Basti, Dwarka Forest is not only a friend—it can also turn into a foe, as history shows how space has played a critical role in the stigmatization of Dalits.
Flirting with the Cause of Nature
Mainstream environmental actors have amplified the ecological significance of the Dwarka Forest by emphasizing its role in sheltering urban biodiversity, acting as a green buffer against intensifying heat and pollution. Their petitions highlight disrupted wildlife mobility and the illegal dumping of demolition waste—urgent concerns that deserve public attention.
Yet for the economically privileged, environmentalism often becomes a flirtation—an occasional, symbolic engagement, detached from the harsh realities faced by the communities who live alongside these contested ecologies. Consider the following event poster which invites people to “Assemble to Save Dwarka Forest” on the 4th of May at DDA Park in Sector 22. On the surface, it appears part of the larger campaign to protect the forest. But a closer look reveals a quiet dissonance: the main activity is the painting and installation of 1,000 water bowls—not in the forest, but in “parks and colleges”.
This gesture raises difficult questions: What exactly is being saved, and how? How does this act confront the threats facing the forest—like fencing, habitat fragmentation, and institutional neglect? When campaigns prioritize optics or outreach over on-ground action, they risk turning environmentalism into performance, substituting meaningful resistance with symbolic acts. To truly defend urban forests like Dwarka, the focus must shift from bird bowls to broken policies.
There is something deeply unsettling about this divergence. The forest, which continues to face deforestation, fragmentation, and dumping of demolition waste, is not visually represented in the poster at all. There is no image of it, no map, no mention of what endangers it, or who uses it. The message gets diluted, and the urgency displaced. This is not to say that birds don’t need water. But what does that have to do with the contested forest land in Dwarka? The real struggle to protect that space from erasure is quietly backgrounded.
The forest becomes a symbolic placeholder, a convenient metaphor to frame a summer volunteer activity. The cause lends emotional weight, while the action proposed takes place elsewhere. There’s something performative about this gesture—an event invoking the forest’s name, but staged outside it.
This kind of visual and strategic disconnect reflects a common issue in contemporary urban environmental movements. Symbolic gestures often eclipse the gritty, site-specific work of resistance and repair. When campaigns blur such distinctions, they dilute public understanding of the actual issues and redirect energy away from systemic environmental challenges. We are left with a poster that appears to be about saving a forest, but doesn't even step into it, however, largely shared.
Consider the following images from a protest organised to save the Dwarka Forest. The event was framed around the "Right to Co-Exist"—a call for harmony among animals, the environment, birds, wildlife, forests and trees. But these categories, while evocative, were treated as mutually exclusive, rather than interconnected parts of a shared ecology. On the ground, however, the dominant tone of the protest leaned more towards advocating for the protection of dogs and promoting veganism, rather than engaging with the full spectrum of ecological or social justice. The flyer used to promote the protest featured a raised protest fist—a classic symbol of resistance—placed beside images of a woman, Nilgais, and even giraffes. It claimed to speak for social and climate justice, yet noticeably, no one from the nearby Harijan Basti was present or represented or even invited.
Dalit Ecologies and the Myth of the Green Lung
The emerging scholarship on Dalit Ecologies unsettles the notion that environmentalism is the domain of the privileged. These ecologies are shaped by necessity, resilience and survival. They manifest in the everyday: collecting herbs for healing, feeding stray animals, walking shaded trails to avoid heatstroke, or simply pausing for a moment’s reprieve from the relentless pace of the city.
In Harijan Basti, such ecologies unfold quietly but unmistakably. Women pass through the forest to shorten their routes, conserving time and energy. Children name the Nilgai they’ve seen, and people speak of birds returning with the change of seasons. These interactions are acts of adaptation. In them lies a form of environmental stewardship that is relational (5).
Unlike the tidy, apolitical images of ‘green lungs’ featured in master plans or conservation campaigns, the forest here breathes a different kind of life. The human-nature engagement of negotiation, improvisation and care offers an alternative imagination of urban nature—one that is inhabited, messy, and entangled with caste, labour, and memory.
Dwarka Forest is more than a ‘green lung’ for Delhi. It is a lived commons where society and ecology are inseparable. But this intertwined life stands threatened. The popular narrative of ecological damage foreshadows displacement, fragmentation and erasure. For communities like those in Harijan Basti, it is a neighbour, a witness to their daily lives—sometimes even a quiet companion during moments of fatigue or grief. What is truly at stake is the collective memory and meanings associated with this land.
Toward Unconventional Ecologies
Urban environmentalism in India stands at a moral and political juncture. If it continues to privilege technocratic expertise while excluding histories of habitation and dispossession, it will reproduce the very inequalities it claims to resist. Conservation cannot be separated from caste, class, and lived experience.
The struggle for Dwarka Forest invites us to imagine an inclusive, grounded environmentalism—one that listens before it plans, that begins with those who live beside the forest, who know its moods and seasons, who have shaped and been shaped by it. Their stories deepen the ecological cause and remind us that caring for nature also means caring for the people bound to it.
In the end, the question is not only what we are saving, but for whom, and by what means.
Figure 3: Environmental actors decide which image gets to see the light—and which remains in the dark.
In one frame, nilgais retreat behind locked gates; in another, a worker washes utensils beside barricades and stagnant water. Both are fenced out—of land, of decisions, and of visibility. Whose survival gets framed, and whose is forgotten? (Photographs: SDF)
Perhaps the most difficult, yet urgent, first step for mainstream environmental actors is to stop regurgitating abstraction, and start listening with intent—to account for the enduring intersections of caste, class and ecology that still shape survival in India.
Notes:
1. This was part of the relocation and resettlement of slum-dwelling communities in the name of building a “world-class city.” Since the 1950s, various slum clearance programmes have been implemented in Delhi under the Slum Areas (Improvement and Clearance) Act of 1956 and the Master Plan of Delhi (1962).
As Dupont (2008) notes, “The extent of slum demolitions in Delhi is difficult to assess with accuracy as no updating of the numbers of JJ clusters and JJ families has been provided by the slum and JJ department of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), which results in inconsistency in the official data published.” The last comprehensive list, detailing the number of jhuggi families in each cluster for every zone of the city, dates back to 1994. Secondary sources provide little information on the relocation, but testimonies and cross-validation point to the year 1983.
2. Ecosystem services are the benefits which human beings can directly and indirectly derive from nature. There are various types of services such as provisioning or regulating. For instance, food or fuel wood are classified as former, while air purification is a regulating service. Read more here.
3. The Dwarka Forest area, once agricultural land, was acquired by the Delhi Development Authority from Shahabad Muhammadpur villagers in the 1960s, and later handed over to the Ministry of Railways in 2008 under the Delhi Master Plan 2021. Read more here and here.
4. What constitutes climate environmentalism in the context of urban areas can analogously be understood by what Mukul Sharma writes in his book: “the daily existence of Dalits—their labour, place, occupation, discrimination, violence, and the intensity of living in hard and hostile situations—are the real issues of Dalit climate environmentalism.”
5. In the context of Dwarka Forest, a few questions need to be self-critically reflected upon by conservation groups. Does their claim of the forest acknowledge its use by the people of Harijan Basti? Once it becomes a deemed forest, what happens to access—be it trails or even fuelwood collection?
Mukul Sharma writes in Dalit Ecologies: “Earth and earthly environments host Dalit lives. Despite the devaluation of material and human life, the earth’s physicality and materiality embodies habitability, diversity, freedom and change, offering unlimited promises for Dalits.” Yet such socio-ecological interactions remain unacknowledged and absent from current environmental discourse.
This leads to a clear conflict: a generalized, universal idea of ‘nature’ that shies away from ground realities. In the case of Dwarka Forest, the socially embedded character of nature is ignored. The deemed forest category might bring a sense of protection, but without ensuring access to trails or fuelwood, it risks worsening the working conditions of people in Harijan Basti.
All of this points to the social generalization of climate change. Caste-neutral approaches to environmental justice pave the way for climate casteism. To move beyond this, environmental politics must integrate the unequal distribution of risks and benefits.
Acknowledgement:
My sincere gratitude to Dr. Budhaditya Das, whose insights encouraged me to think beyond species and spaces, and to highlight people’s lived realities into the heart of this story.
Photos courtesy of Nirjesh Gautam
