Once, Gurugram’s landscape was shaped by a river. Long before glass facades, expressways and corporate towers defined the city, the Sahibi flowed through its plains, feeding fields, replenishing wetlands and sustaining a fragile ecological balance. Today, it endures only as the Najafgarh drain, a stinking, blackened channel choked by urban neglect and industrial filth.
The Sahibi, born in the dry hills of Rajasthan’s Sikar district, traces a nearly 300-km journey through Jaipur, Alwar and Rewari before brushing past north-western Gurugram, threading through western Delhi and finally meeting the Yamuna near Wazirabad. Along this route, it once nourished the Najafgarh Jheel, a seasonal wetland spread across more than 300 square kilometres, which served as a natural sponge for monsoon waters and as a habitat for migratory birds, including the Siberian crane.
Today, that memory has all but vanished. “Because of untreated industrial effluents flowing into the Sahibi, the water has turned pitch black. In stretches through Gurgaon and Delhi, the river's carrying capacity has shrunk drastically, squeezed into a narrow course that cannot handle heavy flows,” said Akash Phogat, a worker with an NGO engaged in reviving awareness about the river.
Environmentalists say the Sahibi is “ecologically dead”, incapable of supporting aquatic life, yet still contaminating groundwater with nitrates and phosphates. Once a river of abundance, its channel is now little more than a receptacle of waste.
The transformation began in colonial times. A powerful earthquake during the Mughal era had already reduced its flow, but in 1865, the British dug an artificial outflow from the Najafgarh Jheel to reclaim farmland. What they left behind became the Najafgarh drain, according to Manu Bhatnagar, principal director of the Natural Heritage Division at INTACH. For decades afterwards, it retained its vitality. Historian Sohail Hashmi recalled how the drain’s waters were still clean enough in the 1960s to sustain fish, and how locals collected vanaspati oil that had solidified in its cool waters after an accidental factory release.
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The shift from river to drain, however, accelerated with urbanisation. Gurugram’s natural slope, descending from the Aravalli hills in the south-east towards the Sahibi basin in the north-west, once hosted dozens of streams and ponds. As the city sprawled across low-lying areas, its floodplains and wetlands were filled and concretised. Today, only four of its original 60 canals survive, leaving the city vulnerable to flooding even after moderate rains.
Google Earth imagery shows the Sahibi’s narrow, hyacinth-choked channel at the Gurgaon-Delhi border. What once connected communities, irrigated fields and enriched wetlands has been reduced to a foul-smelling nala, notorious for spreading hydrogen sulphide and methane fumes across Delhi’s suburbs.
The ecological collapse of the Sahibi highlights a wider pattern across India’s cities, where unplanned urbanisation and untreated effluents have strangled natural water systems. Successive governments have spoken of restoring urban water bodies, with the BJP-led Centre launching campaigns such as the Jal Shakti Abhiyan and Amrit Sarovar scheme to revive ponds and reservoirs. Yet on the ground, unchecked construction and industrial discharge continue to overwhelm fragile ecosystems.
If Gurugram is to withstand the future, its erratic monsoons, rising heat and declining groundwater, experts warn that its survival depends on rebuilding natural drainage, reviving lost streams, and respecting the hydrology that once sustained it. For now, the Sahibi lingers as a river only in memory, its once-clear waters replaced by the blackened currents of neglect.
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