Gurugram (Haryana): It happened quickly and unceremoniously. On August 26, a sinkhole opened up on a chunk of the Delhi-Jaipur highway, on the Ifco Chowk service road. The ground simply collapsed, said eyewitnesses. There was putrid brown water and a small group of spectators. And where once stood a road – one of the city’s essential arteries – was a massive, otherworldly crater: 15 feet deep and 10 feet wide.Workers took three days to pump out the sewage. A GMDA (Gurgaon Metropolitan Development Authority) official at the site estimated that the repair work, which entails shuttering the area around the drainage line, relining existing pipes that have been damaged, as well as replacing 20 metres of the line, will take about 15 days.An otherwise busy road, from where a number of bus tour companies operate, has come to a standstill. Cars, trucks and buses navigate their way through the little space that is now available.“It’s become very difficult for us. There is so much traffic, and various police and government vehicles are parked throughout the day. I now have to park my buses behind the sinkhole, or on the flyover,” said Devashish, a Flixbus worker.Eighteen-year-old Billu, who runs a biryani stall made invisible by the GMDA’s green scaffolding, complained that “business was down” because there were no buses standing.Sinkholes, flooded roads, rainwater drains clogged with sewage and trash, a further outpouring of sewage, citizens wading through water that is four feet high – these are the images, totems that have come to represent Gurugram, loftily known as Haryana’s Millennium City, which contributes 60% to the state’s GDP and has a BJP “triple-engine sarkar” in power. On the flipside lies a surplus of dizzying extravagance: plush apartment buildings designed to insulate their inhabitants; office complexes that serve the same purpose. Aspiration coexists alongside what is despicable. This city bereft of urban planning, whose population rose by 74% in the span of a decade, has come to serve as a hallmark for how not to build a city. Every year, residents wake up to the same urban nightmare: floods that could have been prevented.Billu at his biryani stall. Photo: Antara BaruahGurugram has lost 200 water bodiesAt the core of this maze of underpasses, overbridges and manic construction, lies a fact. Gurugram has lost over 200 of its water bodies. The Survey of India Records of 1976 place it as having 519 bodies. By 2018, this number had dropped to a paltry 251, squandered by the emergence and rapid development of the city.The city’s infrastructure was originally constructed by the British: storm water drainage, the sewage, the water supply, and overall water management. This included a hundred check-dams and bunds that have mostly been built on.These water bodies would have been crucial to flood management because they would have served as ‘sponges’, absorbers of rain water. However, despite the city’s deluge of water-related problems – floods, a depleted water table, uncontrolled use of ground water, severe shortages, rampant construction – according to the 2031 Gurugram Master Plan, over 60% of the city will be concretised.“Too many paved surfaces leads to a water run-off, which results in overflowing water that has no room for absorption. Ideally, if Gurugram had been a planned city, it would’ve used water sensitive urban design, so, despite the abundance of paved surfaces, water would still be channelised. Currently, the water is channelised by roads because there is no subsurface channelisation of storm water and nor is there any space for it percolate into the ground,” explained Mitashi Singh, Programme Manager, Sustainable Habitat Programming at the Centre for Science and Environment, noting that urban sensitive water design is “exactly” what Noida has done.Environmentalists, urban planners, and local stakeholders have long stressed the importance of ecological restoration as critical to the city’s survival.For instance, NGO IAmGurgaon restored the Aravalli Creek, opposite Shiv Nadar School on Sunset Boulevard, another essential connecting point which thousands of commuters venture on to daily. It is located mere kilometres away from Golf Course Road, which routinely floods and receives boatloads of publicity owing to its reputation as a corporate power centre. Video footage of the Aravalli Creek area shows water gushing into the creek ecosystem, and leaving the road flood free.Government audacity has replaced accountabilityWhat infuriates upper-class citizens most is the audaciousness. They moved to Gurugram, ferried by a dream: ‘world-class’ housing, no water or electricity woes, and a short, thought-free commute. They pay their taxes, furiously message on RWA groups, and issue calls for action.It is these citizens who are appalled at the lack of transparency on part of the authorities. Reports say that in the past nine years, Rs 503 crore have been spent on drainage. In 2019-2020, a 280 crore “comprehensive drainage project,” which comprised the building of 20 check-dams in the Aravallis and 200 groundwater recharge wells was approved. Six years later, it is yet to materialise.Last year, when eight people died due to the floods, resident Mahendar Vazirani filed a PIL in the district court, seeking an audit of civic funds – money spent on roads, drainage, sewage. The court issued notices to the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG), the deputy commissioner, and DCP (traffic), asking them to submit detailed replies in two weeks. A year has passed, but the replies have not come. The matter is next listed on September 18, 2026.“The courts are more apprehensive because the government is involved. We haven’t received any proper answers from the DC office, nor is there any proper representation,” said Manish Shandilya, the lawyer representing Vazirani. He has worked on four such petitions, and each is suspended in limbo.The Wire reached out to the MCG and the GMDA via phone calls, texts and emails. This report will be updated when they respond.Vazirani moved from Delhi to Gurugram 12 years ago because his children’s offices were in the city. Last year, he moved houses – from an individual house to a condominium – because 3-4 feet of water would gather outside his home, leaving him stranded. He also recalled his son getting stuck in seven-hour-long traffic jams.“I filed the petition with hope. But what kind of a millennium city is this?” he asked.Sanjay Lal, president of the Apartments Owners Federation, contested the 2024 Haryana elections as an Independent, because residents were being “manipulated” by builders and the authorities. While Vazirani routed his questions through court, and Lal through governance, their plight was the same.“We were asking factual administrative questions that can be independently examined through the government records and technical surveys. Our demand was for the government to open up the records and allow independent verification,” Lal said. “We have reached a point of saturation. People are tired. A city cannot be built over its drainage system, for people to then blame the rain.”The 74th Constitutional Amendment Act, which was implemented in 1993, empowers Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) like Municipal Corporations by making them responsible for managing cities. But in reality, this is yet to materialise. According to Lal, this makes even seeking accountability a challenge. Officials venture from posting to posting, barely staying over a year. By the time they gain context, they’re transferred. They need longer postings, he claimed.“Even today, that power has not completely devolved into their [the ULBs’] hands. The gaps are still there. And even if the power is there, their agenda just keeps expanding,” said Singh of CSE, also highlighting the need for capacity-building.Meanwhile, former GMDA CEO V.S. Kundu, who held the post from 2020 to 2021, said that while the GMDA has adequate resources, owing to the number of agencies, “turf issues” arise.“There are issues of turf and sometimes of coordination. Sometimes the agencies wind up working at cross purposes,” he said.Gurguram in its millennial city avatar, one that is becoming increasingly less accessible. Photo: Antara Baruah‘Construction’ cannot be solutionIn a briefing to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Haryana chief minister Nayab Singh Saini put forth technological solutions: rainwater injection wells and underground storage tanks. Experts and stakeholders have opposed this, as Gurugram already has a stormwater drainage system that is ineffectual because it is choked with sewage and trash.“The solutions are always construction driven – to showcase that we’re doing something. But they’re not addressing the symptom. The main drains are so full that they cannot take any more water. Open areas – lakes, johads – are all gone because construction is taking away these systems,” said Latika Thukral, founder of IAmGurgaon.Golf Course Road and Cyber City, supposedly the manifestations of the Gurugram dream, were built on top of these natural drainage systems.The city’s landscape is another structural reality that needs to be accounted for. At its highest point, near the Aravalis, it stands at an elevation of 290 metres, and there is 78 metre difference between the highest and lowest points, making for a natural gradient. Owing to these clogged drains and concretisation, this gradient has been obstructed, resulting in water logging.Back in 2020, the National Green Tribunal reprimanded the GMDA for allowing the flow of untreated sewage into storm water drains, and for not following through on an assessment which called for the replenishing of natural wetlands. The GMDA had said that while there may be a delay due to the pandemic, the outpouring of sewage would stop by 2021.That same year, 2020, another 100 crore drainage system was proposed next to MG Road. IAmGurgaon, which also works closely with government agencies, presented an alternative: ecological intervention. Kundu, who was GMDA CEO at the time, agreed.Along with the GMDA, the NGO spearheaded the restoration of the creek ecosystem, which was in a state of disuse, operating as a makeshift dumping ground.“We started working with the government agencies. In fact, from spending 100 crores, they spent only 20 lakhs. We started moving the water into these open forest areas. And the next day, no flooding took place,” said Thukral.Additionally, they have also worked on the reinvigoration of the Badshahpur Forest corridor, Ghata Bundh, the Chakkarpur-Wazirabad Bundh, and Sikandarpur Pahadi.Kundu also questioned the effectiveness of construction-driven projects.“What I have found dealing with the engineers, the government departments, and the consultants is that they always go for low-hanging fruit. They are used to building concrete structures, so they feel comfortable. But I have found that an engineering solution is not always the best solution,” said the former GMDA CEO. “Building drains is not a real solution, it’s a political solution.”No public sphere, all private arrangementsBut the scale of infrastructural challenges are too great for a single authority, NGO, or private corporation to tackle. In certain areas, like Old Gurgaon, there are no storm water drains at all. So, water enters the drains designated for sewage.Local resident Mahendar Vazirani breathes a sigh of relief because now, he at least lives in a condominium, he says, where an RWA manages the affairs of water and flooding. A number of these buildings function in this way, where they work in independent silos. Multiple condominiums use emergency dewatering drains to pump water out of their societies, and into main roads. This too is emblematic of Gurguram, where concepts of fashioning a city and a public, do not exist, as has been pointed out by sociologist Sanjay Srivastava.“Urban life in Gurugram is largely organised through the idea that there is no public except that which belongs to one’s family, caste and class circuits. It is this that also lies at the heart of what passes for urban planning,” wrote Srivastava in The Indian Express. “If, for example, it is considered personally beneficial to cement over a waterway or clear a forest area for a private residence, then that activity comes to pass. The wider ramifications are rarely considered as there is really no sense of a public and hence, public welfare beyond the immediate circles in which people live.”