The recent warnings from BBMP to citizen-led lake groups against raising public funds for lake maintenance have raised several important questions. The Palike has also sent a notice to one of the groups, the Puttenahalli Neighbourhood Lake Improvement Trust (PNLIT), to stop maintenance works around the lake. In response, PNLIT, incidentally the first citizen group in Bengaluru to formally maintain a lake, announced their withdrawal from all maintenance activities at Puttenahalli lake in JP Nagar. 

In the absence of BBMP support, lake groups had anyway been struggling to continue their work over the past five years. Now, as these groups are withdrawing or limiting their work, what will be the state of lakes in the absence of a regular lake maintenance system by BBMP?

Reversing hard-earned gains

BBMP’s current stance has come as a blow to all those private groups and citizen collectives that have played a crucial role in conserving lakes in their localities for many years, in close association with government authorities. Much of citizen-led lake restoration and upkeep was formalised in 2011, when BBMP first signed MoUs entrusting lake maintenance to citizen groups having a track record of protecting their local lakes. This move actually resulted in the revival of many water bodies.

For example, after BBMP rejuvenated the dried up Puttenahalli lake around 2010, PNLIT got government agencies’ permission to let treated sewage into the lake to fill it up, installed biofiltration units to improve water quality, worked with multiple government agencies to prevent sewage entry into the lake, hired security and maintenance staff, and even made some progress in resolving encroachment issues at the lake. The works were largely financed by donations from local residents.

Even lake groups that don’t have an MoU with BBMP conduct awareness programmes, do vigilance on ground, facilitate CSR funding and contribute to BBMP’s Detailed Project Reports for lake rejuvenation. Bengaluru now has over 60 lake groups that monitor a total of around 120 lakes.

Read more: Communities take command of lake cleanups in Bengaluru

But in 2020, BBMP stopped renewing the MoUs with citizen groups based on a High Court order in a Public Interest Litigation that ruled that the government should not enter into MoUs with any “corporate entity”. Citizen groups then impleaded themselves into the case, arguing they are not corporate entities. Hearing in the case is still ongoing.

While collaborating with government agencies was never easy for citizen groups, the scenario has worsened since the court order according to a July 12th statement by the Federation of Bengaluru Lakes, the umbrella organisation of all lake groups including those without MoUs. The statement says these groups have been denied permission to conduct awareness programmes and volunteer conservation programmes, and got notices penalising maintenance works.

The real concern now: No back-up plans

Government agencies have a poor track record of protecting Bengaluru’s lakes. According to a study, between 1973 and 2007, two-fifths of water bodies in the Greater Bangalore region were lost, and their total area halved. The resulting impact is not just limited to the loss of green public spaces, but also groundwater pollution from garbage-ridden lakebeds, or persistent waterlogging in many localities due to the disappearance of lakes and their interconnected drain network. While citizens bear the brunt of such environmental degradation, BBMP’s recent action shows the Palike expects them to have little say in solving these problems.

BBMP itself has acknowledged that it lacks sufficient resources for lake maintenance. Of the 210 lakes in the city, 167 are under BBMP.

While the state government and BBMP allocates large amounts for restoring deteriorated lakes, the challenge is the maintenance afterwards, as many lake groups have pointed out. Several news reports have shown deterioration of lakes already rejuvenated by BBMP, or poor execution of maintenance work by BBMP contractors. In contrast, lakes monitored by citizen groups have fared better as they keep constant vigil and alert authorities about any new issue that crops up.

Since 2020, BBMP has been citing the court order as its reason for not renewing the MoUs. It didn’t raise concerns of lake mismanagement by citizen groups with whom it had MoUs until then. Neither did the Palike propose an alternative mechanism to take care of the lakes that citizen groups painstakingly managed for the past one or two decades.

As a result, lake maintenance has suffered, especially in large lakes like Kaikondarahalli where CSR funds raised by the citizen group were a major source for maintenance works.

Besides, as the Federation of Bengaluru Lakes (FBL) points out, government agencies have not addressed several alerts that local groups have raised on issues like new encroachments, and have delayed approvals for critical civil structures. Security lapses also happen around lakes under the watch of untrained home guards.

BBMP has said that it would allow citizen participation only after the court approves its draft Community Involvement for Lake Conservation Policy, 2024, in the ongoing case. According to the draft policy, all fundraising and maintenance works should be routed through BBMP. But FBL points out that the document doesn’t clearly address aspects like controlling sewage inflow or encroachments, or provisions for community stewardship.

While the court case drags on, it wouldn’t be surprising if formerly well-maintained lakes fall back into a state of disrepair under BBMP’s watch.

Court orders binding on citizens alone?

Whether BBMP overreached in implementing the court order by bracketing citizen groups as ‘corporate entities’ is debatable. But clearly, BBMP and other government agencies have not implemented court orders that apply to themselves when it comes to lake protection.

In 2012, accepting the NK Patil Committee recommendations in another PIL, the High Court ordered the state government to set up District and Municipal Lake Protection Committees. These committees would include senior government officials along with community participation, and would be monitored by a state-level apex committee. There would be a committee at the level of Bangalore Metropolitan Area, in which the BBMP Commissioner would be in charge of protecting lakes within BBMP limits.

Despite the 2012 order, a contempt petition that followed it, and orders in the current PIL, these committees are not functional. Citizens demanded proper constitution of the Bengaluru committee as early as 2014 and continue to do so. These committees would have institutionalised citizen participation in lake protection to some extent. But without institutional mechanisms, BBMP is free to reject or accept citizen involvement at any time.

In 2023, BBMP introduced the Kere Mitra (lake volunteer) scheme for citizen participation. But lake activists have criticised the scheme for being an ad hoc arrangement without any training for the volunteers and not resolving the issues they raise. As per the Kere Mitra dashboard, the number of lakes being monitored by volunteers now is negligible.

Citizen action not perfect, but essential and can evolve

Citizens have had a huge role in protecting the commons in Bengaluru – not just lakes, but also parks such as Lalbagh, trees proposed to be cut for road widening, and so on.

Read more: Citizen groups in Bengaluru celebrate milestone years of progress and impact

The interventions have not been perfect — for example, some lake groups have been criticised for prioritising recreation and not the livelihoods of communities traditionally dependent on lakes. But there have also been models that show citizen groups can be inclusive. For example, in Kaikondarahalli and Jakkur, citizen groups have kept the lake unfenced and involved local communities like cowherds, farmers and fishermen in lake rejuvenation.

Bengaluru’s citizen-led lake movements have widely been recognised as a model in protecting urban commons, including by Nobel Prize winner in economics Elinor Ostrom. These movements provide an alternative to BBMP’s top-down model of lake management that has largely yielded poor results. 

Instead of viewing citizens as potential rule violators, BBMP should treat them as stakeholders and institutionalise community participation in lake governance. For as Elinor and co-author Harini Nagendra assert in their paper, “At a time when many city governments are facing financial and administrative challenges that limit their ability to regulate and maintain urban commons, models of public-community partnerships could provide more inclusive, equitable, and sustainable institutional alternatives.”

Also read:

• Bengaluru lakes can be maintained only with local community support: Usha Rajagopalan
• A tale of two lakes: What it says about lake restoration outside BBMP limits
• A to Z guide to Bengaluru’s lakes