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· 5 min read

The River That Came Back

A city forgot its river was a river. Then it remembered.

I came across this story through Nithin Kamath’s post about a Rainmatter Foundation video on river restoration. It left me hopeful.

Asadullah Khan grew up along the Kham River in what was then called Aurangabad. “During my childhood, when I used to come here, the water of the Kham River was so clean we used to drink from it,” he says.

The Kham wasn’t just any river. Four hundred years ago, the city built a sophisticated system of stepwells and aqueducts called Neher to store its clean water. In a water-scarce region, the Kham was the city’s lifeline.

Then, like most urban rivers in India, it became something else entirely.

Natasha Zarine, co-founder of EcoSattva, the environmental firm that would later help lead its restoration, describes what the river had become: “Nobody wanted to come here. Once you got to the bridge, you’d quickly accelerate away because of the stench and the filth. The river became a reflection of the worst side of us. It had our garbage and our sewage, our negligence, and a lack of governance.”

Most residents didn’t even know it was a river. They thought of it as a nallah - a sewage drain.

What Changed

In 2019, the Municipal Corporation of Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar - as the city is now called - partnered with EcoSattva and the Varroc Foundation. But what made their approach different wasn’t the partnership itself. It was how they thought about the problem.

They began with six months of research. Drones surveyed the entire river and identified 249 points where waste was entering the water. Not a rough estimate. Exact locations. They didn’t start by cleaning - they started by understanding.

Then they went upstream. Instead of just removing garbage, they figured out where it was coming from and stopped it at the source. Sewage was rerouted to treatment plants. Physical barriers were installed on bridges to block dumping. Garbage traps caught waste before it could move downstream.

The municipal commissioner showed up for weekend cleanups - not sending a representative, but working alongside citizens. Every Saturday, people came out. No complicated sign-up. Just show up and help.

But the most crucial shift wasn’t infrastructure. It was dignity. They formalized the work of the Safai Saathis - the waste pickers who had always been part of the informal economy. These workers, many of them women, received professional training and now work formally for the municipal government. Over 600 sanitation staff were integrated into municipal jobs.

The cleanup didn’t just restore a river. It restored dignity to the people doing the hardest work.

What Returned

The numbers tell part of the story. Over 1.24 lakh square meters of polluted land cleaned. More than a lakh native trees planted. The river has been flood-free for two years.

But the numbers don’t capture what really came back.

They discovered 16 freshwater springs buried under debris for years - the city’s forgotten water sources, waiting underneath all along.

Ashok Jain, a mechanical engineer, now visits the Riverside EcoPark daily to photograph birds - he’s spotted 35 species so far.

A local band wrote a song for the river. It became an anthem for the restoration. Schoolchildren go on birdwatching tours. Women’s groups organize workshops along the riverfront.

And residents started calling it something new: “Aapli Kham” - Our Kham.

The Kham is now the first seasonal river in India to have an Urban River Management Plan. In 2024, the project won the St Andrews Prize for the Environment. The approach is being adapted for other rivers in the region.

What It Means

Natasha Zarine put it simply: “This really is a community, municipal leadership, everyone coming together to fix what we had ourselves broken. And I think that has really brought out the best in all of us and in our city and in this beautiful place.”

For Asadullah Khan, who remembers drinking from the Kham as a child, leading this restoration has been personal. “I feel proud because this is environmental work,” he says, “and doing this satisfies my soul.”

A city forgot its river was a river. Then it decided to remember.

What I Took From This

This story stayed with me because of what Aurangabad didn’t do.

They didn’t start by cleaning. They spent six months understanding where the waste was coming from - 249 entry points, mapped precisely. Only then did they act. Addy Osmani recently wrote that “the best engineers are obsessed with solving user problems” - understanding deeply before building. The Kham team did exactly that. They diagnosed before they treated.

The municipal commissioner showing up for weekend cleanups - not sending someone, but working alongside citizens - reminded me of something I’ve seen in the best teams. Leadership that shows up for the work, not just the results.

And making participation simple - every Saturday, just show up - is the same principle behind reducing friction. Make it easy to contribute, and contribution follows.

References

Co-written with AI. Credit the prose, blame the opinions.