New Delhi: “It’s taazi sabzi without chemicals. The taste is different, fresher, and takes less time to cook, uses less water to clean,” gushed Afroze Jamal in Nizamuddin Basti. “We used to buy everything from the market, but now nearly 20 houses on our lane grow their own.” In Nizamuddin and in other crowded urban bastis, where every coveted inch is covered with concrete, a quiet revolution is unfolding. Rooftops, balconies and discarded plastic crates are transforming into thriving vegetable patches.Jamal, who works with a local sewing centre, narrated how her family’s small bucket garden in the basti now provides enough karela, tomatoes, spinach and chillies for daily cooking. “It saves money,” said Jamal. “And gardening also brings us, neighbours, together to share seeds, tips and harvests.” She sometimes even has cooking sessions with her colleagues.The elation of Jamal and others is thanks to Basti Gardens of Hope, a youth-led initiative helping families grow their own food to reduce household expenses. The project was launched in Oct 2023 by Raghav Lal Rai, a 17-year-old environmentalist who coached junior footballers in the urban slums at the time. Inspired by his own home kitchen garden and his volunteering with an NGO, the initiative began with just a handful of families in Nizamuddin Basti. Within a year, it expanded to Sarai Kale Khan, Aali Village in Sarita Vihar and Kusumpur Pahadi in Vasant Vihar, engaging more than 50 families and garnering the support of locals, experts and NGOs such as Khelo Tennis India Foundation and Hope Foundation.”We realised that in bastis, there was hardly any greenery and nutrition was a huge gap,” said Rai, who recently won the Global Sustainability Award for his effort. “Our aim was simple: reduce food bills by 10-15% and make fresh, chemical-free vegetables available right at home. Over time, we also wanted to build awareness about pollinators like bees, bats and butterflies, which are vital to our food systems.”Basti Gardens of Hope provides families with seeds, soil, manure and grow-bags, while organising weekly workshops on horticulture, composting and soil health. Technical experts, including horticulturists and trainers, teach the families to grow seasonal vegetables and flowers in limited spaces. Spinach, amaranth, tomatoes, brinjal, gourds, chillies, coriander, mint, radishes, bananas and papayas now thrive on rooftops that once stood unused.Afroz’s son, Hammad, who now helps spread the initiative, and the basti women double up as informal community gardeners, guiding their neighbours on watering cycles, pest control using neem sprays and protecting delicate plants from the sun with discarded bedsheets. “It has become part of our daily routine, as much as cooking or cleaning,” smiles one of them. “And it makes us proud to be able to feed our families something we grew with our own hands.”Beyond food and cost savings, the project has an environmental vision too. Its ‘Pollinator Story’ campaign encourages families to plant flowers that attract bees and butterflies, helping restore biodiversity in an urban landscape increasingly hostile to natural life. “Pollinators are vital for life, but are often ignored in cities,” Rai explained. “By creating a chain of kitchen gardens in Delhi’s slums, we are building small but vital habitats for them.”For Jaideep Bhatia, founder of Khelo Tennis India Foundation and one of the gardening initiative’s earliest supporters, the effort is also about restoring dignity and balance to neighbourhoods often associated with congestion and deprivation. “In Nizamuddin Basti, 30,000 individuals from 2,500 families live on 0.17 sq km. While daunting in such circumstances, families gradually understood the value of kitchen gardens and joined us. Today, these small gardens are proof that even the most cramped corners of Delhi can bloom,” he said.As the project prepares for its next phase — expanding to more bastis and providing pollinator-friendly seed kits across the city — the gardeners in Delhi’s slums are already showing what sustainability can look like at the grassroots, with fresh food on the plate, green spaces in the concrete sprawl and hope rooted in soil, an concept also planned by the previous Delhi govt but never implemented.
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