The success of the Capital's unusual 'waste-to-art' theme parks

Delhi is now taking one step forward and expanding the idea to other parts of country, under the Swachh Survekshan 2023

New Delhi: While Delhi's performance on sanitation indices has been consistently poor, its ' waste-to-art' theme parks have clicked, and the city is now emerging as the centre of these unusual tourist destinations. With the incorporation of the new concept in the 2023 Swachh rankings mechanism, other municipalities and urban local bodies are starting to seek help from the corporation's horticulture department to set up similar parks in other parts of the country.

Ticket sales data from MCD shows that more than 2.22 million tickets have been sold for the two operational parks themed on monument replicas made with scrap.  (Sanchit Khanna./HT Photo)

Ticket sales data from MCD shows that more than 2.22 million tickets have been sold for the two operational parks themed on monument replicas made with scrap. This includes Sarai Kale Khan Waste to wonder Park (March 2019-June 2022), which sold 19,39,302 tickets, and Bharat Darshan Park Punjabi Bagh (December 26, 2021-June 2022), which sold 288,602. And work has been initiated for building more such units on themes ranging from the freedom struggle to Bollywood; and traditional festivals to that old favourite of theme park makers, dinosaurs.

How it started

Built on the theme of ‘waste to art’, the municipal corporation in Delhi’s idea was to propagate the concept of aesthetically designed open public spaces where visitors are charged a nominal entry fee and bring in much-needed revenue. Before the first one-of-its-kind waste-to-art park came up at Sarai Kale Khan in 2019, with replicas of the Seven Wonders of the World made out of metallic waste, ticketed parks were almost unheard of in Delhi. But, the 7-wonders park ended up becoming a huge attraction, drawing in people from across the city with weekends being especially crowded. According to municipal officials, the park built by South Delhi Municipal Corporation (there were three separate corporations then) recovered its cost within 12 months.

Bharat Darshan Park.  (Sanchit Khanna./HT Photo)

Having tasted success in its first endeavour, the municipal body replicated the idea in west Delhi’s Punjabi Bagh with the Bharat Darshan Park which opened in December last year. The second park too proved a runaway success. Now, four more parks on different themes with the basic concept of creating installations from scrap material are coming up in different parts of the city. Also, with the waste-to-art concept being incorporated in the credits for 2023 Swachh rankings, other municipalities and urban local bodies are seeking help from the corporation’s horticulture department to set up similar parks in other cities across the country, senior MCD officials said. To sell the concept further, they added, the corporation plans to get artists to make small souvenir replicas which can be sold to parks managed by other agencies. The civic body also plans to get the replicas done for residents' welfare bodies in return for scrap.

The success of theme parks

The installations at Waste to Wonder park at Sarai Kale Khan were made out of 150 tonnes of scrap metal from automobile parts and old appliances dumped in municipal yards. Commissioner of the erstwhile South MCD, Puneet Goel said then that the park was inspired by Seven Wonders park in Rajasthan’s Kota, where a scene of the Bollywood film ‘Badrinath Ki Dulhania’ was shot. A corporation team visited Kota park in 2017. and conceptualized a similar park in Delhi. A senior MCD official involved with the parks project said that the ticket sales data and footfall show that there is a great appetite for open green recreational spaces in the city. “The city hardly had open recreational spaces after the closure of Appu Ghar (Pragati Maidan) and the Delhi Eye (near Kalindi Kunj)”.

Bharat Darshan Park.  (Sanchit Khanna./HT Photo)

According to municipal data, more than 2.22 million tickets have been sold so far at the two waste-to-art parks in Sarai Kale Khan and Punjabi Bagh since their inception. Since its inception, the park in Sarai Kale Khan had 1,939, 302 visitors and the Bharat Darshan Park had 288,602 visitors in the last six months alone. “SDMC collected Rs8 crore in ticket sales the first year of Sarai Kale Khan park, recovering the entire cost of Rs7.5 crore construction.

The popularity of the 5-acre park rivalled that of the National Zoological Park which had a footfall of 2.2million in the same period,” a second MCD official said. Encouraged by the overwhelming response, the corporation developed a bigger park in Punjabi Bagh. The Bharat Darshan Park came up on an 8.5-acre plot for ₹20 crore with replicas of historical monuments from across the country made out of scrap material.

Vikas Sharma, 25, an artist who worked on the two parks said most of those who were involved with the construction are from fine arts and architecture backgrounds. “Most of us have Masters in fine arts from places such as Delhi College of Art, Jamia Millia with specialization in sculpture,” he added.

Four more in the pipeline

MCD (now a unified body) is working on plans to build four more such parks, each one on a different theme, but with the basic concept of making installations out of waste. To mark the 75th year of India’s Independence, the Shahidi Park will come up near ITO which will showcase the freedom movement.

“We are committed to completing it in diamond jubilee celebration year,” a third MCD official said. Similarly, a ‘Bollywood park’ at Welcome lake will depict the ‘the journey of Bollywood film industry and its history’; the Celebration Park in east Delhi’s Nirman Vihar is proposed to feature cultural and regional festivals of India, and ‘World park’ will come up in the business district of Karol Bagh area at Ajmal Khan park. It will feature 25 replicas of iconic monuments and structures from all around the world such as The Great Sphinx at Giza (Egypt), The Great Wall of China, the Sydney Opera House, Brandenburg Gate from Berlin, the Stonehenge (Wiltshire, England), among others.

Bharat Darshan Park.  (Sanchit Khanna./HT Photo)

However, unlike the first two projects, these four will be executed in public-private partnership mode by inviting investment from private players. “Instead of just using metal scrap as was carried out in the first two parks, the new parks will also use glass, plastic and construction debris to recreate scenes, statues and exhibits,” the third MCD official added.

Exporting the idea

Besides generating revenue and creating open public spaces, MCD hopes to improve its Swachh India ratings with these parks. The three erstwhile civic bodies consistently fared poorly on the countrywide sanitation rankings. However, in the latest toolkit of Swachh Survekshan 2023, 2% weightage has been given for developing such parks under the “waste to wealth’ theme, according to the ministry of housing and urban affairs. With this, other states have been asking MCD to help them develop similar parks. A senior MCD horticulture department official said that requests have been received in Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh. “We can carry out project management consultancy for helping in planning such projects. As per CPWD norms, 5% of the project cost can be charged for helping in planning and 10% if we also take part in the execution of the project,” the official added.

Expert speak

Dr Victor R Shinde who lead technical expert (water and environment) at the National Institute of Urban Affairs said that the high footfalls in these waste-to-art theme parks are testimony to the fact that there is a clear demand for open-air public spaces with blue-green infrastructure. "People want more such open green spaces with recreational value. The city should be working towards meeting this demand but it must be underlined that the 'green part' is not ignored in these development projects. Integrating the right proportion of green space while developing the galleries around the parks should be kept in focus," he added.

Atin Biswas, a waste management expert and programme director of the municipal solid waste sector in the Centre for Science and Environment, however, argued that more emphasis should be given to alternatives rather than making amusement parks.

"I am of a different opinion for using such amusement parks as vehicles for raising awareness about the reutilisation of waste and 3R principles. "Instead of such amusement parks, we should focus on setting up facilities where alternatives can be featured and popularised such as jute bags for plastic alternatives and other single-use plastic items. Delhi generates 11,400MT of waste daily. If we have a plastic bottle, we can reuse it in 100 different ways in our homes, but will it solve the overall problem of waste management? Using a steel bottle as an alternative will reduce the generation of waste. Such amusement parks can be tried but I remain sceptical about their utility as a vehicle for raising awareness," Biswas said.