Rishi shares his environmental activism journey in his book Saving Aarey – The Undoing of an Environmental Campaign. The book is a playbook on environmental activism. Its most powerful message to budding activists is not to be reactive but work with the local administration when a project is being conceived.
Edited excerpts of his chat with Benedict Paramanand, Editor of SustainabilityNext. This is the first in the Urban Communities for Change Series between SN and Urban Venture Lab.
Highlights
- Founded By Rishi Aggarwal https://www.linkedin.com/in/rishiaggarwaal/
- Started in 2012, however became fully active in 2023
- Walking Project aims to reclaim Mumbai’s streets for pedestrians
- Create pressure group/advocacy to sustain pressure on Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation
- Supported by individual donations
- Works through a unique collaboration between the BMC, urban planners, environmental activists and citizen advocacy groups.
- Done 35 community walks
- Currently advocating for SV Road Walkability Improvement – Mumbai – 23 kms long and has 30 junctions, 11 railway stations. This road will improve quality of life for 20 lakhs people
Tell me a bit about your background in Sustainability and Environment?
I have had a childhood love for nature and environment. I had the pleasure and privilege to be born and do a bit of my schooling in Mussoorie till I was 12. It left a very strong mark on me, and subsequently, coming to Mumbai at the age of 13. That whole contrast, seeing the difference in environment and the urban challenges really made me committed at an early age that I will work through my life on sustainability and environmental issues.
I started the nature club in my college and after college, I’ve been into numerous environmental activism campaigns in Mumbai. So, I think it’s been a lifelong involvement with environmental sustainability issues.
You were part of the Mangrove Conservation Project in Mumbai years ago. Can you tell us a bit about it?
As a teenager I moved to Lokhandwala Complex in Andheri West. And Lokhandwala has a large and very beautiful mangrove forest right in its backyard. In 1999 I saved the Lokhandwala Lake, which was under imminent danger from dumping. Subsequently, from 2001 there was intense pressure from the developer lobby to reclaim large parts of mangroves in that neighbourhood, and I intervened solo that time and created a community over the next five years. We were able to save almost 300 acres of mangroves. That led to collaboration with people and groups. We formed The Mangrove Society of India, Mumbai Chapter in 2002. I ran the Chapter for more than a decade.
Mumbai has had a rich history of community engagement in environmental issues. How does your Walking Project which you started, fit into it?
Walkable cities have been a lifelong interest to me. In 2012 I founded the Walking Project after I got burnt out of my involvement with mangroves. The Walking Project is basically an advocacy group which champions for pedestrian rights to a safe, convenient and joyful walking experience on roads. We started from Mumbai. We thought we would have the resources to scale up all across India and do advocacy for all Indian cities. But the way things are, we are still in 2025 in Mumbai. We’re doing good work here, especially in the past two years. We have a few youth in the team now. Efforts like these can become good employment opportunities for self-motivated young people.
How’s the support from the people of Mumbai?
The last six months have been very eventful. My article in Mumbai Mirror late last year drew the attention of Sandeep Bajoria. He’s a wealthy businessman, and he came in very strongly to support the program financially, and that really changed a lot of things for us,
Our board of advisors includes senior people from the industry. Shri Ganesh was one of the founding members of NASSCOM, Savita Rao, Ashish and others, and this board of advisors is now really guiding the further growth. We organised the Walkable Cities Mumbai conclave in April, this year. It brought together a lot of businessmen and industrialists in Mumbai. Our WhatsApp group has 200 members. Our influence is much more on social media. It would be nice to have individual donors in large numbers but that has been very slow.
What lessons can other initiatives, communities learn from the Walking Project?
It is important to identify key activities which will make a difference. This will bring communities and other stakeholders together. Reaction mode does not help. You need to be true to your goal. It should be done consistently for at least a year. The initial journey can be difficult. You have to strategically choose what you should do and, more importantly, what you shouldn’t do. Also these efforts can start by the efforts of a few but unless we do not provide resources as a whole struggle sets in.
What is the state of community movement in Mumbai today?
I’m not happy with the way communities are organized in Mumbai. Mumbai is going through one of the most difficult times. The city is seeing enormous governance challenges, especially in the past five years. It’s a tragedy to see three million people spend one hour standing at bus stops daily. Our tree cover is in a very precarious situation. Communities here need to be far more organised. NGOs, civil society groups need a lot of support.
What is the future now of your work plans?
We are aiming to become methodical about how we are going to go ahead. Mumbai has 26 administrative wards, and what we are saying is the city is too big. Almost 20 million people. We still haven’t had a census since 2011. It’s not easy for a small group of three or four people in the Secretariat to be able to handle this. So, we want to form board level committees with at least 10 local citizens joining them.
These ward committees will highlight the most important road stretches or junctions, which are being very intensively used and are currently unsafe. We will formalize a structure whereby these groups at the ward level can work with the local Assistant Commissioner, the traffic police and other authorities. Budgetary provisions can be made from BMC, and there can be a time bound closure to these problems.
We immediately need 4-5 more people in the core walking project team. We keep getting queries from other municipal corporations. The secret of success with the Municipal Corporation is frequent interactions, continuous feedback, to ensure that all the policies and the rules and guidelines are in place.
Proactive Volunteering
Right now, we know that there is a 300 kilometer metro network being rolled out across the region. Unlike before, we are already in touch with MMRDA and BMC saying that we don’t want to reach you after three years, when we see faults and then bring out faults. We want to interact with you right away, give you feedback, so that when you’re giving out your work orders and your contracts, these things are already in place, and we don’t see civil work which is wrongly executed. And for this, we really need a robust team. Reviewing plans and giving feedback is time consuming.
How can community groups get the youth excited to join activism?
There is a significant section of the youth which really wants to do meaningful community work.
Given the pressures youth face today what can make it a satisfying experience for them is to have very clear cut roles and timelines. Also, having very clear cut written documents as SOPs, which they can read helps instead of informal conversations. The engagement has to be very methodical.
I’ve realized that it needs to be far more methodical with volunteers than with your immediate team because with your immediate team, you’re constantly in touch, you can do damage control and fire fighting very easily. But with volunteers, it leads to a lot of frustration if things don’t go as per plan.
Tell us a bit about your book Saving Aarey – The Undoing of an Environmental Campaign
The book is basically about capturing my frustration with leading environmental campaigns in Mumbai in the last few decades. It is also meant to be a guiding light for current and future volunteers.
Things take decades, at times, to go wrong, and the things build up before a crisis comes. And that is what I’m capturing in my book.
We saw that we had not done anything in the intervening period to save Aarey though the alternatives for the car shed were clearly available. The civil society groups did not act in time. The purpose of the book is to guide future campaigns.
For the video on SN YouTube Channel – https://youtu.be/OOAl1C4sba0
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