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Gurugram far from being a cosmo city

Gurugram is striving hard to make it to the top-10 cosmopolitan cities of the world. While things including ever-expanding tech hub, influx of foreign nationals, installation of world-class technologies and infrastructure in certain pockets surely leave Gurugram residents hopeful, the truth is that the city is still struggling for basic amenities.

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Sumedha Sharma

Gurugram is striving hard to make it to the top-10 cosmopolitan cities of the world. While things including ever-expanding tech hub, influx of foreign nationals, installation of world-class technologies and infrastructure in certain pockets surely leave Gurugram residents hopeful, the truth is that the city is still struggling for basic amenities. 

Unlike cosmopolitan cities around the world, the city continues to blatantly ignore the plight of its depleted core civic infrastructure. Be it the bus stand, railway station, bus shelters, parks, cycle tracks or health facilities, the core skeletal infrastructure of the city is in a shambles and seeks attention and revival amid the frenzy of inauguration and launch of new infra wonders.

“If you talk of civic infrastructure, new Gurugram is the most ignored lot. We have nothing — be it access to railway station or bus stand. We have no parks and no water connection in many areas. The development of the city should not be lopsided before announcing any ambiguous projects. We need to get basic civic requirements fulfilled first,” says Praveen Malik, a new Gurugram resident.

Health infrastructure ailing in ‘medical tourism hub’

While mohalla clinics in Delhi are redefining health infrastructure, Gurugram, just a few kilometres away, is a classic example of collapsed health infrastructure. The millennium city is renowned world over as a medical tourism hub, all thanks to its corporate-like five-star hospitals, but when it comes to government hospitals and community health centres, there is still a long way to go. 

After repeated instances of damage to building and even injuries to patients, the Civil Hospital in the old city is undergoing a revamp. All major departments have been shifted to a second facility in Sector 10, but issues including staff shortage, lack of equipment, out of stock medicines and diagnostic kits continue to ail it. Hundreds of patients flock the OPDs, women are forced to share beds in maternity wards and a majority of medicines have to be purchased from outside. The condition is worse in rural segments making the entire population of the city, even the migrant labour class, completely dependent on private healthcare. The city that hosts a large number of foreign medical tourists should learn from different countries where healthcare is deemed to be a citizen’s basic right.

Eco-friendly transportation a distant dream

One of the common threads that unite cosmo cities across the world is their transport system. Being pro-pedestrians and cyclists, the cities offer seamless access to it residents. However, Gurugram’s mobility structure hardly recognises pedestrians as key road users. Despite several surveys highlighting the number of pedestrians being the highest here using road infrastructure, not even 20% of the city roads have been built to accommodate them. Ironic it is, but Gurugram scores for the highest pedestrian deaths in accidents in the state. Lack of footpaths, cycle tracks and facilities for non-motorised transport is what pulls the city down from attaining its cosmo dream.

Bus stand — a long lost ‘identity’

Established in 1959, Gurugram’s inter-city and Inter-State Bus Stand seems to have frozen in time. Situated in the heart of the old city, the plight of the bus stand shatters the myth of Gurugram being a “millennium city”. Comprising three structures, which were long declared unsafe by the PWD, it continues to play host to over 1,500 buses every day and is visited by over 50,000 commuters. In sheer contrast, the expected outlay in line with city’s millennial image, the bus stand can easily pass off as one belonging to a rural Haryana village.  Lack of a proper enquiry desk, clean toilets, waiting room, Wi-Fi or even a proper safe building is what makes the bus stand the biggest blot on the city’s infrastructure. All three parts of the bus stand —administrative block, a bus terminal and bus workshop — were declared unsafe in 2015. However,  a majority of the area is still being used. Some of the facilities, including the ticket counter, should have been shifted to temporary sheds, but the unsafe zones continue to be open for public access. While an ambitious revamp was announced almost seven years ago, it was retraced after the declaration of shifting the bus stand. After repeated proposals and identifying different spots, it has finally been decided to shift the facility to Sector 10. However, like a majority of projects, the bus stand continues to stand in its current spot even after three years of declaration. It is not just lack of maintenance and facilities inside, but traffic chaos due to it in old Gurugram that is considered one of the biggest problems.

Railway station awaits ‘millennial’ revamp

The Gurugram railway station can give its bus stand a run for money any day. With an array of issues ranging from poor security measures to lack of enough coolies, the railway station has attained notoriety to an extent that a majority of commuters opt for Delhi railway station even to board trains that have stoppage in the city. As many as 23 passenger trains stop at Gurugram railway station every day at a frequency of one every hour. A similar number of inter-state trains make a halt here. However, the station lacks majorly in catering to thousands of commuters. Be it lack of enough waiting space, drinking water, sanitation, lackadaisical security measures, including metal detectors, or even porters, the railway station is any commuter’s nightmare. The facility, yet again, is a big blot to city’s cosmo-aspirations. Time and again, revamped plans have been made, but these have hardly seen complete execution and till date the railway station awaits long promised ‘millennial’ revamp.

Parks in a deplorable condition

Green infrastructure is not just the backbone of any sustainable cosmopolitan city, but also a necessity for quality living. Ironically, the millennium city fails majorly on this parameter. While the newly developed sectors (from 58-115) lack majorly in terms of parks, even the older areas, including those falling under the MCG wards number 1, 10 and 22, primarily rural areas or unregularised and regularised colonies, too, lack parks owing to no civic patronage earlier. Parks were an integral part of Gurugram’s development by HUDA, but surely were never on the top priority of authorities or residents. Barring a handful of parks, a majority of these are facing constant deterioration and encroachment and have turned into dumpyards for C&D waste. For the first time, in the last decade, the Municipal Corporation, earlier this year, went ahead in surveying the area in its limits looking for the best and worst parks. Following six months of rigorous surveys, it drew up a list of the “best maintained” and “worst maintained” parks. In total, over 100 parks were surveyed by a committee comprising MCG officials. The team that conducted the survey, visited all 35 city wards in six months, randomly picked 3-4 parks in every neighbourhood and evaluated these on various criteria such as sanitation, greenery and maintenance. The best parks were found in Sector 23 in Ward Number 2, Sector 22B in Ward Number 22, Basai Ward Number 8 and Sector 46 in Ward Number 29. Among the worst-maintained parks were that of Sector 10 A of Ward No. 23 and those in Ward Numbers 13, 17 and 21. A few of these parks were also found encroached upon by residents. The other parks that need attention are in Sectors 38, 39, 31, 34 and Sector 17.

Officialspeak

Gurugram’s civic infrastructure was ignored and depleted by the preceding governments. We, in fact, in the last five years, took upon us to revamp and get these projects, which were shelved since years, going. Issues including the shifting of bus stand and upkeep of parks are a top priority and will materialise soon. Sudhir Singla, MLA

In this year’s budget, we have kept the long pending civic upgrade on a priority. We have completed a lot of projects and many are in the pipeline. Things are working in time frame and soon all revamp will be finished. Amit Khatri, MCG Commissioner

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