Saturday, July 30, 2016

Gurgaon, Millennium City?

I had seen the trailer on the Tuesday 25th July 2016 but the full movie or rather extended trailer was released on Thursday 28th July 2016. Am I talking about any movie here?

Sadly!! No, I am talking about my beloved adopted city and the Glitzy Millennium City Gurgaon. While the city is full of tall buildings, large and expensive houses and luxury malls the things we lack are the most important.

You still don't get uninterrupted electricity in most of the areas, you can't even get an internet connection in some areas of gurgaon (Some Cyber City, eh?) then there comes the whole matter of infrastructure and Civic Administration. There are no roads to speak in few areas though work is going on but that is too little too late. I was in Gurgaon back in the year 2006-2007 and I came back here in 2015-2016. In those 9 years Gurgaon changed a lot, new areas sprung up, new malls and roads are better now and also public transport does exist here now. So far so good.

So how come such achievements go down the toilet when we have heavy rains just for few hours. Since I have some back to Gurgaon along every main road there is work going on for Deep Sewer and Gurgaon Municipality claimed to have spent around 5 crore rs cleaning the sewers and waterways and such and yet when it rained for an hour on Tuesday few roads were filled with enough water to  bring the traffic to the crawl and after all why not when there was more than a feet of water along the entire strech of the road which hampered movement and stopped few luxury cars in their way.

And then came the extended trailer for this show of mismanagement Thursday 28th July it rained heavily for few hours. I enjoyed the rain from inside my house with my wife on my side and loved the rain which brought relief from the heat and humidity. But all the euphoria vaporized as soon as left for office at around 7 PM. As soon as I left the main gate of my colony I could see the road covered in rain water, well that was normal. I moved ahead and noticed that the entire service lane was covered in more than a foot of water - Failure all the way. I still braved ahead mind you on my bike in 1 foot of water with other vehicles cars and such moving slowly too. Somehow I reached and main road and amazingly even though it was slightly on higher ground it was also covered in same level of water as the service lane again wonderful drainage system .. Failure, Failure and Failure all the way.

Sample some news links:

http://www.msn.com/en-in/news/newsindia/don%E2%80%99t-come-to-gurgaon-cops-say-after-snarls-waterlogging-schools-shut/ar-BBv0Hak?li=AAggbRN&ocid=spartandhp
http://www.india.com/news/india/gurgaon-comes-to-a-standstill-after-heavy-traffic-jam-manohar-lal-khattar-blames-arvind-kejriwal-1367543/
http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/hundreds-stuck-due-to-watterlogging-in-gurgaon-2941320/
http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/hundreds-stuck-due-to-watterlogging-in-gurgaon-2941320/

My office is merely around 2 kms from my house and yet through the crippling traffic it took me more than hour to travel the distance and that too on the bike, if you were in a car, you would no doubt be in the jam for few more hours for the same distance. Through almost all the way the entire road was submered in the dirty water with garbage mixed for the good measure. Vehicles were stuck all through the road and you could see people walk in the middle with their shoes in their hands.

Dismal scenes of people and vehicles stuck back to back could be seen on every road, there were even reports of people swimming in the water which was logged on the highway - HIGHWAY!!! Way to go Millennium City. Politicians are busy being politicians and changing name of this city but they should be much more concerned about the city itself and focus on basic facilities before going for other projects.