Gurgaon, October 15
Every evening, when a tired S.K. Sareen returns home from work, he is more concerned about the direction of the wind in his area than about the meals cooked everyday by his maid. The slightest breeze blowing westward is sure to ruin his homecoming.
For, as the breeze sweeps over the adjoining Aravalli range, stooping just low enough to pick up the whiff of rotting garbage and bring it right up to DLF City’s Phase 1, he can’t curse himself enough for choosing a house with a range-view.
In fact, other residents like him in the DLF are so disturbed that they have named a crossing “Kachra Chowk” after the garbage dump right behind their area. The “smell of the city” today not only comes from this open garbage dump tucked away in the Aravallis but also from a non-existent sewerage system in the multiple townships that have mushroomed in New Gurgaon.
It’s virtually a “bin-free” city liberally dotted with garbage, which either spreads itself all over the city before returning to dust or gets heaped in less inhabited areas with vacant plots available.
“We have failed to understand the planning in this futuristic city which is going to the dogs. Three decades after Gurgaon came into existence, there is no garbage disposal system. At the rate solid waste is being dumped in the open, we will soon have mounds climbing up to the level of the high rise buildings,” quips R.S. Rathee, president of the Gurgaon Citizens Council, adding that the city generates about 450 metric tonnes of waste.
With just about nothing in the name of infrastructure created for garbage disposal, the residents are awaiting the setting up of the promised garbage disposal plant, formalities for which were completed in July this year after a long-drawn process of land acquisition and environmental clearances. As if that is not enough agony for the residents, most of new Gurgaon has no connectivity to the sewerage system.
The non-connectivity to the sewerage network means an additional burden on the residents of this new township, who have to cough up extra money to fund ferrying of its sewerage to vacant plots. “There are colonies spending nearly Rs 3 lakh a month only to fix sewerage disposal by hiring tankers,” says president of the Sushant Lok, Rajinder Bhatt. He is perturbed with the fact that the colonisers are taxing the residents in the name of laying sewer lines when the entire money was deposited at the time the plots were purchased.
It’s a similar story in nearly all townships and group housing societies which are hiring tankers to dispose of their sewerage in open areas. Rains only added to the woes and choked lines, wherever they exist and throw back dirty water flushed out.
City residents are no mood to take this apathy lying low anymore and have protested vociferously. This government is at fault, the bureaucracy is to blame and we are aggrieved, remarks the president of the Joint Action Forum of Residents Associations, Col Rattan Singh (retd), who has even “issued warnings” to the district top brass about relocating the garbage site. For now, residents of this Millennium City are only hoping Gurgaon will stop stop raising a stink and spare them some fresh odourless air.
Concluded
