Gurugram: The Millennium City, which has some of the toniest residential addresses in NCR alongside offices of tech behemoths like Google and Microsoft and several other Fortune 500 companies, has one common thread every monsoon: Waist deep water in thoroughfares, submerged roads, open manholes, live wires dangling in the open, floating cars and nightmarish 4-8 hours traffic gridlock.
This has become the monsoon leitmotif of the city since the last several years.
It was no different on the night of 9 July, when 133 mm of rain poured down in about 4 hours. Eight people lost their lives overnight while navigating the submerged roads and accidentally coming in contact with a live wire or by falling off their vehicles.
The deluge also saw a section of the Southern Peripheral Road (SPR), one of the crucial links between Gurgaon-Faridabad road and NH-48, cave in for the third time this year. A large sinkhole was created and a truck fell inside it.
The joke circulating on social media was to forget Disneyland since Gurugram becomes a giant waterpark at this time of the year.
This chaos has again exposed the failing infrastructure in the Millennium City, which contributes close to 60 percent to Haryana’s GDP.
Horror stories of how residents braved the submerged roads and nightmarish traffic on their commute home abound. It was a similar story last year. And the year before, begging the question why?
Like always, this time too the city authorities got away by blaming the intense downpour and how it’s a challenge to handle such deluge occurring over a short time span.
Gurgaon, or Gurugram after its name change in 2016, is a fairly new city. Located in the foothills of the Aravalli Range, the city came up somewhere in early 2000 in what used to be villages and farm land in southern Haryana.
The development authorities–Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA)–collect crores of rupees as External Development Charge from real estate developers to build external infrastructure such as roads, drains, sewerage network, etc.
But there is opaqueness about how much of it is actually spent in developing and upgrading the basic civic infrastructure, said urban sector experts.
What could have been a poster card of how modern cities need to be built has ended up being the exact opposite. Unplanned urbanisation coupled with rampant encroachment, systemic neglect and institutional failures has made Gurugram a living example of how modern cities should not be built, said urbanists, town planners and the city residents.
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A paradox, where real estate projects came first, trunk infra later
According to urban sector experts, Gurugram has become a victim of the warped planning of the city administrators in many ways.
Sudhir Krishna, a former Union urban development secretary, said that Gurugram is far more chaotic than many other Indian cities as much of the development was left to the developers, also called the colonisers, except for the trunk infrastructure.
“It was the officially declared policy. The colonisers bought land from farmers, developed the plots and sold it to builders. The builder in turn built their project, developed the colony’s internal infrastructure such as the drains, sewer lines and internal roads and sold the houses,” he told ThePrint.
The city development administrator—in this case GMDA (earlier HUDA)—was mandated to develop the external trunk infrastructure, such as main roads, water and sewer lines, drains and power network. And the fund for developing this came from the developers in the form of External Development Charges (EDC).
“It’s only after people started moving in that the development authorities started building the external trunk infrastructure,” said Harsh Bansal, president, Delhi chapter of National Real Estate Development Council (NAREDCO).
Krishna, who is a resident of Gurugram Sector 61, said that a model like that has never worked out.
“So long as big developers like DLF are there, in their own jurisdiction they will develop, but there are developers on the other side of the road. While the developers on one side would be a capable one, the developers on the other side have in many cases vanished, either because they are financially bankrupt or they are under legal challenges….So, there is nobody to develop the subsidiary roads and related infrastructure like drains and walkways,” the former urban development secretary said.
Bansal, whose Unity group owns commercial plots in Gurugram, said the developers are only responsible for providing infrastructure internally, not outside their colonies or apartment complexes.
“That’s where Gurgaon is different from Noida. In Noida, the authorities developed the trunk infrastructure first and then sold the developed plots. The infrastructure cost is added to the plot cost. In Gurgaon, the developer buys directly from farmers, builds the project and sells. Then GMDA builds the infrastructure,” the Unity group CMD said.
But the developer has to cough up EDC, which is currently Rs 2 crore per acre. “Without paying EDC, a developer does not get the license to build,” added Bansal.
However, urban sector experts said there is an opaqueness about how much of the EDC collected by GMDA is spent on developing/improving Gurugram’s civic infrastructure.
In 2011, the Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA) in an affidavit filed before the Punjab and Haryana High Court acknowledged that it had collected Rs 5,702 crore till December 2010 from Gurugram residents as EDC, of which the unspent Rs 2,700 crore was as fixed deposits in banks.
In its affidavit filed in response to a PIL, the HUDA also justified spending a part of the EDC to develop the Gurugram metro.
Haryana’s Department of Town and Country Planning allocated Rs 1,000 crore from EDC for infrastructure projects across Haryana in February. Of this, the GMDA received Rs 333 crore while the Haryana Shahari Vikas Pradhikaran got Rs 576 crore for the state, including Gurugram.
However, these funds are yet to be used for any kind of infrastructure upgrade, with much of the money tied up in bureaucratic delays, a source in the state government said.
According to Dikshu C. Kukreja, noted architect and managing principal of CP Kukreja Architects, the recipe for disaster is that political regimes in the past have sold Gurugram without thinking about what the reality will come out to be.
“You just allowed people to buy land from farmers directly, get the land use changed and just build it. All that they bothered about was the piece of land. This is the worst way to build, there is no planning. Complete absence of planning, which is restricted only to papers,” he said to ThePrint.
Sanjay Lal, President of the Federation of Apartment Owners Association, said that the situation has gone from bad to worse since 2016 when the residents had gone through similar nightmare of waiting in their cars on blocked roads throughout the night.
“Due to haphazard approvals for buildings without looking at the natural flow of rainwater, nullahs have been blocked everywhere,” he alleged.
Skewed planning has left gaping holes
Kukreja said it is the piecemeal planning by the development authorities that has turned the city into an urban nightmare.
For instance, the sewage and drainage waste from builder societies and condominiums is managed through a combination of on-site Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs) and the municipal sewerage network. The onsite STPs are built by developers within the complex or abutting it.
When a plot is sold to a private developer, they are mandated to build internal sewage lines within their residential or commercial complexes, which should connect to the city’s main sewerage network.
In many areas, including some of the upscale localities, drainage and sewer lines have been laid by the developer to cater to the residents but they are not linked to the main sewer or drainage network.
Kusum Sharma, Chairperson of the Suncity RWA on Golf Course Road, told The Print, “Half the city lacks proper stormwater pipelines, so water floods roads and basements.”
Then there are missing links in the drainage network, which creates bottlenecks and traps water in low-lying areas like DLF-Phase 2, Sohna Road, Hero Honda Chowk among others, a former official of the Department of Town and Country Planning, who did not want to be named, said.
“Poor maintenance of the drainage and sewer network compounds the problem, especially when it rains heavily. There is no outlet for this water and it spills outside causing water logging,” the former official added.
It’s the city residents, though, who have to bear the brunt of this haphazard planning.
A senior official of Municipal Corporation Gurugram (MCG) told ThePrint that managing the drainage of the city is a challenge because of its rapidly growing population.
According to the 2011 Census, the population within the MCG’s jurisdiction was 8.76 lakh. “By 2025, our estimates peg the population at 20-21 lakh, a staggering 128 percent increase, compared to Haryana’s modest 22 percent population growth—from 2.53 crore to approximately 3.10 crore,” the official added.
“In such a situation, a heavy downpour can make things tougher. Gurugram’s population has increased at a very fast pace during the past decade and it has outpaced infrastructure development, leaving the system ill-equipped for intense monsoons,” the official conceded.
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Encroachment all over, Master Plan only on paper
It’s not that Gurugram does not have a Master Plan. But urban sector experts, architects and real estate developers feel that the Master Plan remains on paper and mostly overlooked.
Over the years, lax enforcement of the Master Plan has resulted in massive encroachments all over, with construction coming up over natural lakes and even storm water drains, obstructing the flow of water.
“The earlier Master Plans had accounted for natural water channels and ponds. But during the real estate frenzy, particularly between 2007 and 2012, these were sacrificed for construction,” a retired Haryana town and country planning department official said.
Developers were allegedly allowed to build on nullahs (drains) and recharge zones, stripping Gurugram of its natural drainage capacity. “This has led to the loss of ponds and seasonal streams, once the city’s natural sponges and is one of key reasons behind the flooding after heavy rains. There is no porous space left to absorb water,” he added.
Krishna recalled that not long ago, Gurugram had lakes, big nullahs (drains), which were very wide and deep.
“But now the drains have shrunk, both in width and depth because of encroachment and to some extent because of construction. This has reduced their carrying capacity,” he said.
Kukreja also holds encroachment on the natural drainage system and rapid irresponsible urbanisation as the primary reason responsible for the urban mess in the city.
The architect said the problem is because Gurugram’s Master Plan is partly on paper. “If you see the Master Plan carefully, it is not taking into account the ground realities. There is a complete absence of blue and green planning as they call it world over. Blue stands for water supply ant the entire storm water management of the city. That is missing. So is the green and these two things are leading to the mess, which any well planned liveable city takes as a basis for their masterplan.
Kukreja added that rapid, rampant and irresponsible urbanisation has led to construction over existing drainage channels, nullahs and low lying flood plains, especially in areas like Golf Course Extension Road, Sohna Road and that has disrupted the surface water flow of the city.
Badshahpur drain, he said, is a key example where the drain system has been severely obstructed, disrupting the storm water infrastructure. It is a critical drainage network of Gurugram, covering areas like the Golf Course Extension Road and the Southern Peripheral Road.
The senior MCG official quoted earlier admitted that in many newly developed areas, drainage networks are incomplete or entirely absent, creating dead ends that hinder water flow. “Rampant encroachments has worsened the problem. Builders have filled natural nullahs (drains) and ponds to construct complexes, disrupting the natural flow,” he said.
To make matters worse, the mandatory desiltation of drains, which has to be done before every monsoon, is inadequate.
The MCG is allocated a budget annually for desiltation of drains. But Wednesday’s water logging has exposed the MCG, which claims to have spent Rs 450 crore since 2016 on drain cleaning and construction to prevent waterlogging.
Half a dozen agencies but who is accountable?
It’s a problem across Indian cities and Gurugram is no exception. Close to half-a-dozen agencies such as the GMDA, the MCG, HUDA, the Haryana Shehri Vikas Pradhikaran among others are responsible for handling the city’s affairs..
According to Kukreja, the problem is the institutional fragmentation, which has created an absence of integrated planning between authorities like GMDA, MCG, HUDA, etc.
The officials do not see this as a problem though. Pradeep Dahiya, Commissioner, MCG told ThePrint that every agency has a defined role.
According to him, while the GMDA primarily focuses on strategic planning, large-scale infrastructure development, and overall metropolitan governance for the entire Gurugram Metropolitan Area, the MCG is responsible for the day-to-day administration, maintenance of civic amenities, and provision of essential services within its defined municipal limits. “The MCG directly interacts with the citizens for local services.”
Citing an example, Dahiya said that the culverts of NH-48 were found to be unclean. “Our coordination with the NHAI helped clean them.”
He said that while the GMDA focuses on macro-level planning and large-scale, long-term infrastructure projects for the entire metropolitan region, the MCG handles micro-level, day-to-day civic administration and maintenance within the city’s municipal boundaries.
Krishna, the former UD secretary said that the need of the hour is a unified development agency for Gurugram. “The different agencies should sit together and take the call, not for sharing, not for transferring the blame but to decide how they will work together.”
The multiplicity of authority, he said has left the city residents confused about where to go for redressal of their civic woes.
Mitigation efforts: Too little, too late?
Ajay Kumar, Deputy Commissioner, Gurugram, however, asserted that the authorities were leaving no stones unturned to keep the city free of waterlogging during Wednesday’s downpour.
He said that it would be unjustified to compare Gurugram’s condition with 2016 when massive downpour had inundated the city.
“Much improvement has been made in the past one decade. Compared to the 2016 situation, the GMDA had then identified more than 100 points of waterlogging, which have now come down to 15. Similarly, the MCG had identified 150 pockets where the situation has improved now,” he said.
Gurugram’s mayor Raj Rani Malhotra, on the other hand, said the city’s problems should not be seen in isolation, as neighboring Delhi also witnessed a similar situation due to the heavy rains on Wednesday.
“The situation wasn’t bad in Gurugram alone. It was the same story in Delhi, too. One of our family friends started from Delhi at 8 pm and could arrive in Gurugram by 2 am only,” she added.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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