The transition of Gurugram to Gurujam is not a recent event as witnessed on Thursday evening. Rather it’s a long and continuous process.
For a city which has been on a construction spree for the last 3 decades, cases of water bodies, village ponds and drainage systems been leveled and converted into a real estate properties and selling it to private builders or to Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA) by villagers to make profits, has now become a major business norm in the Millennium city.
Not only are the water bodies today been filled up and sold to the builders, but inside the villages, where there used to be a pond, preference is given to community centers and other forms of construction.
This is a scenario of a city which is facing a dearth of ground water reserves and where, in peak summer months, most of the citizens are dependent on tankers for water supply.
Sikandarpur Ghosi is one of the first villages to have benefited from the real estate boom of Gurgaon.
Some of the major landmarks which have been built on the lands acquired from farmers of Sikandarpur Ghosi are DLF- Phase 1, G and H block, Silver Oaks apartments and Global Business parks which has offices of companies like PepsiCo and Indigo airlines.
Inside Sikandarpur village, however, there seems to be no improvement as far as dealing with the monsoon mess is concerned. Even as certain parts of roads inside the village have been concretised recently, poor drainage facilities results in most of the water getting stagnant on the roads.
In one part of the village, even before the huge downpour which the city witnessed on Thursday, Water has been stagnant on the road for more than a month.
One of the villagers said:” We have erred. Had we been judicious with our approach for land use, the village would not have faced the waterlogging issues.”