It is a very strange place. Gurgaon. The first thing that strikes you in the place is the abundance of shopping malls..and office complexes that look like shopping malls. In this urban location of Haryana, where temperatures vary from 5 degrees cold to 45 degrees hot, the architectural style is distinctly 'Manhattenesque' - glass and steel. And in a place where the average electricity shortfall touches 600 MW during peak hours, you really keep wondering about the word 'energy efficiency'. The Delhi authorities-in a bid to tackle the energy crisis decides to close schools early. Really doesn't matter, does it?
A few days in this place and I kind of started imagining how this place came up. Delhi is getting congested and so there is a need for an SBD (suburban business district) and therefore the Haryana government releases huge plots of land in Gurgaon, which is near the Airport, for commercial development, offers tax sops, promises infrastructure and bingo! You've got Gudgaawan. Once you've got companies setting up their business centers here, people need houses to stay and so the residential enclaves come up. For these residents, you need basic amenities like stores where they can buy their groceries and so you have a few stores coming up near these enclaves. Then you need entertainment for this captive audience and you build shopping malls, multiplexes and watering holes. And because you wanted development to occur in a planned and organized manner, you divided the land into sectors which are auctioned off, a few early birds developed their plots while the rest decided to wait and watch. So you have vast tracts of empty lands and chunks of development in between.
And so, people need to commute. There is no public transport system to speak of. Not enough people to run buses or metros, the auto rickshaws too give the area a pass. So you have cycle rickshaws, bought by people who live in mud houses or on the pavements and haggle with the well off citizens over the fare. On average, it takes about 4 times the time it usually takes to commute the same distance, when compared with a motorised vehicle. In a few years time, when there are enough people, the government thinks it is lucrative enough to build a swanky new MRTS, like the Delhi metro, these cycle pullers are now made redundant. And the very same people, who pulled the overweight citizens over bad roads in the summer and thereby played a part in the development of the city into a business hub, are now deemed to be trespassers and their hutments are encroachments on public land. Enter the frame, bulldozers, razing their abodes into dust.
The clan moves on...in search of some other 'developing' area. Some, merely take up alternative-but just as meagre-means of livelihood. And some economist once argued the case of the trickle down effect of the economy.
'Bhaiyya, thoda jaldi chalao, office ke liye der ho rahi hai...'
A few days in this place and I kind of started imagining how this place came up. Delhi is getting congested and so there is a need for an SBD (suburban business district) and therefore the Haryana government releases huge plots of land in Gurgaon, which is near the Airport, for commercial development, offers tax sops, promises infrastructure and bingo! You've got Gudgaawan. Once you've got companies setting up their business centers here, people need houses to stay and so the residential enclaves come up. For these residents, you need basic amenities like stores where they can buy their groceries and so you have a few stores coming up near these enclaves. Then you need entertainment for this captive audience and you build shopping malls, multiplexes and watering holes. And because you wanted development to occur in a planned and organized manner, you divided the land into sectors which are auctioned off, a few early birds developed their plots while the rest decided to wait and watch. So you have vast tracts of empty lands and chunks of development in between.
And so, people need to commute. There is no public transport system to speak of. Not enough people to run buses or metros, the auto rickshaws too give the area a pass. So you have cycle rickshaws, bought by people who live in mud houses or on the pavements and haggle with the well off citizens over the fare. On average, it takes about 4 times the time it usually takes to commute the same distance, when compared with a motorised vehicle. In a few years time, when there are enough people, the government thinks it is lucrative enough to build a swanky new MRTS, like the Delhi metro, these cycle pullers are now made redundant. And the very same people, who pulled the overweight citizens over bad roads in the summer and thereby played a part in the development of the city into a business hub, are now deemed to be trespassers and their hutments are encroachments on public land. Enter the frame, bulldozers, razing their abodes into dust.
The clan moves on...in search of some other 'developing' area. Some, merely take up alternative-but just as meagre-means of livelihood. And some economist once argued the case of the trickle down effect of the economy.
'Bhaiyya, thoda jaldi chalao, office ke liye der ho rahi hai...'
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