MCD survey flags fading traditions
An MCD survey documented a set of vanishing village traditions in Delhi — it specifically names a 500‑year‑old fair in Jharoda and 'dhons' in Naraina as examples. ( )
The Municipal Corporation of Delhi is recording village customs, songs and oral histories across the capital as older traditions recede under urban growth. (hindustantimes.com) The civic body picked 100 villages for documentation and started with 25 in the first phase, using a five-member heritage team to interview residents and collect photos, videos and local accounts. (hindustantimes.com) By April 2026, the team had covered Mehrauli, Isapur and Jharoda and was working in Dhansa; the first-phase list also included places such as Begumpur, Palam, Narela, Wazirabad and Naraina. (hindustantimes.com, jagran.com) Early field notes singled out Jharoda’s annual Baba Haridas fair, which local accounts describe as about 500 years old, and Naraina’s pre-Holi drum gatherings, where youths from different neighborhoods practice for 15 to 20 days before a single community Holika bonfire. (devdiscourse.com, ibc24.in) Municipal officials said the project is aimed at traditions rather than only monuments: wedding songs, birth and death customs, village legends, dialects and stories that survive mainly in memory. (timesofindia.indiatimes.com, hindustantimes.com) That work is being built around elderly residents, whom Municipal Corporation of Delhi researchers described as the last generation carrying many of these oral traditions; officials said some interviews run for two to three hours and require six or seven visits. (hindustantimes.com) Officials tied the effort to Delhi’s rapid expansion, saying many former villages have turned into dense urban neighborhoods or industrial hubs, with local dialects and community rituals fading as Hindi becomes the common language. (timesofindia.indiatimes.com, jagran.com) The material is being inventoried at Town Hall in Chandni Chowk and is meant to feed a planned municipal museum; Jagran also reported that the findings are intended for a book and publication on the heritage cell’s website. (hindustantimes.com, jagran.com) For now, the survey is turning customs that were mostly passed from one elder to another into a formal archive before the villages that kept them become harder to recognize. (devdiscourse.com, timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
