When Gurgaon Rains, Millennium City Drowns in a Million Woes
City infrastructure crumbles in Gurgaon after rains! (Image X.com)
As Tianjin showcased China’s progress at the SCO Summit, Gurgaon exposed India’s urban chaos—flooded streets, civic neglect, and real estate greed define the so-called Millennium City.
By MANISH ANAND
NEW DELHI, September 3, 2025 — Gurgaon showed the world cars and roads submerged in deep waters just as China’s Tianjin grabbed global limelight. Gurgaon and Tianjin—two cities symbolic of India and China’s aspirations for developed-nation status—could not have presented a starker contrast.
In Tianjin, the world saw China’s polished infrastructure and restored heritage as the city hosted the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit. In Gurgaon, the world read an Indian script of development mortgaged to greedy builders. The city’s high-rises continue to sprout even in farmlands, fuelled by buyers who knowingly embrace an urban ghetto.
Arvind Adiga’s The White Tiger once sketched Gurgaon’s hunger for the raw and unrefined. Two decades ago, it announced itself as the land of call centres. Today, it has morphed into corporate India’s “New Mumbai.”
Yet, for nearly a decade, Gurgaon slipped from political focus. Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar prioritized Karnal, his home turf, leaving the Millennium City without a political patron. Residents, mostly wealthy corporate professionals, vent their anger online and move on, returning to their high-speed routines while ignoring expanding landfills and unchecked solid waste.
Stamp duty collections from Gurgaon’s real estate boom could have built a cutting-edge municipal system. Instead, residents watch their money diverted into populist schemes aimed at electoral gains elsewhere. The result: every monsoon, waist-deep water mixed with sewage becomes the new normal.
Consolation comes easily to Gurgaon’s dwellers: the people of Mumbai and Delhi too are swimming in the same floodwaters of civic neglect.
For the poor who service the city, walking through flooded roads is an unavoidable ordeal. For the rich, escape is easy—flying out to hotels near Delhi’s airport, where business meetings and parties continue uninterrupted.
New Delhi’s foresight in land acquisitions around airports has created new hotel townships, enabling the elite to flee chaos. Gurgaon itself, however, remains trapped: a city of glass towers drowning in broken drains.
The pain of the monsoon will fade in a week. The rains will stop, the traffic will roar again, and the White Tigers of Gurgaon will return to their hunt. But the city’s million woes will remain unresolved.
(This is an opinion piece, and views expressed are those of the author only)
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