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Millennium city’s civic muddle
In Gurgaon, civic issues are a major point of concern for the city’s residents. More than malls and multiplexes, the city’s residents want civic amenities such as water and power, transportation, higher education and law and order among others. This is evident from the fact that the residents of Gurgaon have time and again taken up innovative measures to get some civic problem or the other in their locality sorted quickly.
In Gurgaon, civic issues are a major point of concern for the city’s residents. More than malls and multiplexes, the city’s residents want civic amenities such as water and power, transportation, higher education and law and order among others. This is evident from the fact that the residents of Gurgaon have time and again taken up innovative measures to get some civic problem or the other in their locality sorted quickly.
A case in point is the September 2008 protest held by CEOs of various companies against the civic authority for dumping garbage near DLF City. As part of their protest, they even named the crossing Kachra Chowk. This got the desired result as the civic body immediately stopped dumping garbage.
In another case, in April 2009, executives of some companies in Sector 18 renamed a road as Anaath (orphan) Road since no agency was willing to construct the road. The road was built soon after that.
As part of our focus on Gurgaon, Hindustan Times has carried two editorial series, Gurgaon Collapsing and Gurgaon First, to highlight such civic problems and to find solutions to them. Recently HT conducted an extensive study in which 3,000 Gurgaon residents were questioned on the city’s civic issues.
The findings of the study were startling as 78 per cent of the respondents said they were willing to pay any premium price for uninterrupted water supply and 81 per cent said the same for power supply. Likewise, the study revealed 93 per cent said that power shortage was a major problem in Gurgaon and 78 per cent favoured privatization of electricity.
The survey also revealed that the absence of higher education avenues was the third major problem in Gurgaon. Lack of public transportation was the fourth major problem in Gurgaon, while law and order came up as the fifth major issue in Gurgaon with 68 per cent saying there had been a rise in crime in the city.
