Stuck between planes and trains
Instead of easing their travel, these varied modes of transport have added to the daily travails of the people of Shahbad Mohammadpur village near Dwarka
main airport till 1962, when operation shifted to the newly built Terminal-1 (T-1) of the Palam airport, originally an Indian Air Force (IAF) base. In 1986, a new international terminal (Terminal-2) was built and the airport was renamed as IGIA.
“But our problems started when T-3 was operationalised a decade back, with aeroplanes taxing to and from the new terminal. We smell burnt jet fuel throughout the day,” says Satyendra Solanki, a resident. The Delhi International Airport Limited, which operates the airport, did not respond to HT’S email queries on the issue till the time of going to the press.
“You cannot walk anywhere in the village without sniffing the pungent odour of the fumes from the jet engines. People living in houses along the airport wall people find it hard to sleep. The trouble comes not just from the skies, but also from underground (where the Metro’s Airport Experess Line runs),” says Solanki.
In 2012, many residents had first complained of “tremors”. About 70 houses had developed cracks, which the residents attributed to the Metro trains running underground. “Those days it was like low intensity quakes, and it was hard to sleep. But things improved with the Metro reducing the train speeds on the route. But there are portions in our house that still develop cracks over a period of time,” says Solanki. “Even now at times, I can feel the rumbling noise when the Metro passes beneath my house; it is a pretty weird feeling.”
Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) spokesperson Anuj Dayal says that whenever they receive such complaint, they examine and take necessary mitigation measures to reduce the vibrations and noise by installing special elastomeric pads, noise barriers, wheel grinding of trains, as needed.“at Shahbad Mohammadpur also, DMRC took the issue seriously. Necessary mitigation measures such as wheel profiling and track grinding were conducted to solve the problem,” he says.
Shahbad Mohammadpur is among the few villages in Delhi to have a railway station. It has been in service since 1971. About 80 trains pass through the station through the day, with about 11 passenger trains halting at the station.“on an average three trains per hour, both passenger and goods, pass through the station,” says Karan Singh, a ticket supervisor at the station.
Over the years, as the rush to the station increased, especially of people coming from Dwarka and the airport, the traffic at the railway crossing got heavier, disrupting life in the village.
“School buses do not come to the village from Dwarka because of the neverending jams. There have been instances of sick people dying as they waited to cross the tracks to Dwarka. There is an urgent need for an underpass or an overbridge at the level crossing,”says Praveen Lamba, a local.
The residents got a scare in 2015 when a Ranchi-bound small BSF plane crashed soon after take-off a few hundred meters from the village, bursting into flames. All 10 people on board were killed. ‘“The the incident only added to our many fears of living near the airport,” says Rajesh Lamba, a property dealer in the village.
Besides, he adds, being enclosed by the airport wall from three sides, and by a railway line on the fourth, has affected the employment opportunities in the village, with most residents depending on rental incomes. Unlike other villages close to the airport such as Mahipalpur, which has over the years become a hub of hotels, our Shahbad Mohammadpur failed to attract any economic activity, barring a few small cargo firms and taxi services started by locals.
“It is because the access to the village is difficult, and people are wary of air pollution in a village so close to the airport,” says Rajesh Lamba, a property dealer in the village.
“In fact our cremation ground, bus terminal, and parks have been taken over by the airport as it expanded over the years. There is no sewerage system, and we all depend on septic tanks,” says Praveen Lamba, adding, “One might think an international airport in your vicinity can be a boon, but being so close to it has only brought us a litany of miseries.” One can see the bus shelters of the old bus terminal popping out of the new airport wall which was erected in 2018.
Residents say there has been a rise in the incidence of brain stroke, cancer and skin diseases in the past decade – which they fear could be the result of the high levels of noise and air pollution in the village after T-3 became operational.
“My 14-year-old son died of lung tumour last year. There have been several cancer deaths in the village; though we are not sure, we fear that our constant exposure to the air and noise pollution from the airport could be the reason behind this,” says Parminder Gaur, a villager.
Paras Tyagi, co-founder, Centre for Youth Culture, Law & Environment (CYCLE), an NGO, which is conducting social-economic surveys in several Delhi villages, says, “The quality of life is very poor in the village. The government should conduct a study on the effects of the air and noise pollution on the residents and take mitigating measures. Besides, there is an urgent need to create employment opportunities in the village. The airport seems to have grounded all their dreams over the years.”