The rapid growth of infrastructure in Gurgaon has often been environmentally insensitive to its issue of water shortage. Will Gurgaon be a ‘dead’ city in the near future? Harsh Snehanshu reports …
In a sweltering afternoon of May 2014, a cycle-rickshaw chugged rather slowly from the Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA) City Center towards the office of Mr. Lalit Mohan Sharma, a kilometer away in Sector 44, Gurgaon. Ten minutes later, I entered the plush and air-conditioned ambiance of S M Sehgal Foundation, Mr. Sharma’s workplace.
“It’s not exactly air-conditioned,” Sharma explains. “The air-conditioning is powered only for four hours every day and the insulation of the building keeps it cool throughout the day.” S M Sehgal Foundation is one of the only sustainably designed buildings in this corporate haven littered with quintessential skyscrapers. Its floors are partially constructed from wooden air conditioner boxes; the windows have reflective glasses, air-tight panes and insulating shades; there are solar panels on the roof and vents providing sufficient light and ventilation that makes S M Sehgal Foundation one of the lowest consumers of electricity among its neighbouring workspaces. In addition, wastewater generated by the 100 employees in the building is directed to the sewage treatment plant on its roof and recycled to green the lawns.
“The building, designed a decade ago, was supposed to be an example for others, but nobody followed suit,” Sharma says. The programme leader, the Water Management division of the Institute of Rural Research and Development (IRRAD), a subsidiary of Sehgal Foundation, Mr. Sharma is a worried man. Though his organisation focuses on making villages in Haryana and neighbouring states water sufficient, of late his concern hovers over the burgeoning water problem in Gurgaon, a semi-arid erstwhile village that many argue is on a deathbed.
Gurgaon’s a million and a half residents currently consume around 200 million liters of water per day (MLD), of which 144 MLD comes through canals and the rest 56 MLD is sourced from groundwater. The reckless growth of infrastructure and the booming real estate market has forced builders to extract groundwater to use for construction, resulting in the annual depletion rate reaching as high 120 cm in Gurgaon as compared to 35 cm in Delhi. If this trend continues, Gurgaon will be in acute water shortage by 2020 and completely devoid of groundwater by 2025.The rate of depletion has seen exponential growth over the past decade especially, when most of the new-age workers who have been working in one of the myriad multinational companies decide to settle in their new city which was no more an isolated agglomeration in Haryana but a part of the Delhi NCR region.
The Birth of the Urban Village
Gurgaon developed at a breakneck speed due its proximity to the capital of New Delhi, the capital city wrecked by the space constraints and rising land prices. Almost 40 years ago, the state government had passed the Haryana Development and Regulation of Urban Areas Act 1975, which gave space to the private sector in real estate development, leading to large scale acquisition of agricultural land by developers for real estate development through a ‘change in land use’ from the Town and Country Planning Department. This was not in keeping with the conventional method of planning adopted in Independent India. Mr. Shubhagato Dasgupta from the Centre For Policy Research says, “Gurgaon adopted a different model of development than the traditional model used earlier. The private sector was allowed to get land on its own and then applied to HUDA for the network connections. This is a unique model in the Indian context.” Sanjeev Sanyal, President of the Sustainable Planet Institute, points out that though Gurgaon had a plan similar to Dwarka, that plan along with its rules and regulations was largely ignored by developers looking to maximise their interests. “The random nature of growth in the city ensured that several parts of the city did not have basic amenities such as sewerage lines or water supply. More importantly, more than 137 water bodies in the district were filled up to facilitate construction,” adds Sanyal.
Whereas the growth of infrastructure has become more rapid over the past couple of decades, the environmental sensitivity hasn’t been incorporated in the urban planning. Planners and builders have often ignored the geographical setting of Gurgaon as a semi-arid land, with sparse forest covers and natural recharge wells, and the continued concrete paving of lands for parking in urban spaces such as malls and gated communities has hampered percolation, rainwater harvesting and thus, groundwater recharge.
V Srinivasa Chary, Director, Centre for Energy, Environment, Urban Governance and Infrastructure Development at the Administrative Staff College of India, Hyderabad says that “it is not a water production problem, but a water resources management issue [as] we produce more water on a per-capita basis than many western countries.” A majority of the area of Gurgaon — running over 120 sectors — does not receive piped water supply from the state, and projects make their own arrangements by digging borewells. In the public supply areas, a significant portion is sourced from public borewells (which is estimated to be more than 30,000 in number). This has led to a massive exploitation of groundwater and according to the Central Ground Water Board‘s last report, the Gurgaon block is overdrawing groundwater by about 300% of the annual recharge.Given the absence of proper piped watersupply, the dependence on water tanks is increasing and many builders and the local population in faraway areas like Sohna and Manesar are relying on tankers.
In an effort to save Gurgaon from the impending doom, a project for constructing a canal with water treatment plants was undertaken. Construction work on the 102 km canal between Munak in Haryana border and Haiderpur in Delhi has almost been completed. The canal has been constructed to stop loss of water through leakages in various existing canals along the Yamuna. The canal is expected to be fully functional by the end of the 12th Five Year Plan in 2017. However, given the current condition of progress, that seems highly unlikely. It was only a year back in June 2013 that three water treatment plants were commissioned by the Delhi government in order to solve the problems of water shortage in both Gurgaon as well as Delhi. However, Gurgaon’s strong opposition to any water sharing schemes has stalled the project. As of now, there is not a single water treatment plant in Munak Canal that is operational.
Failure on the Planning Front
A large part of Gurgaon’s failure is attributed to the absurdity of the engineers, planners and other stakeholders who designed the city. The inadequacy in designing water systems is clearly reflected in the fact that little attention has been paid to maintaining a gradient that would facilitate the flow of water from one point to the other. A case in point is the Unitech Sector, where the subsidiary sewer networks are installed below the main sewage line and it requires a pump to pull up the underlying sewage water to the main line. Gurgaon lacks its pipeline backbone and inplaces where it has, it more or less fails to follow the gradient requirements.
Nitya Jacob, author of JalYatra, says, “Gurgaon failed in two fronts. First, the system of designing was flawed in itself where sustainability wasn’t taken into account, and secondly, the master plans that were laid out were only selectively implemented. The state authority HUDA was in charge of selling land to developers. Neither HUDA nor the developers took proper responsibility of putting a sensible infrastructure in placeand since the master plans were designed by the collaboration of the two parties, each party passed on the blame to the other.” Now, an extensive practice of digging and decaying roads has to be exercised in laying down these pipelines. The costs incurred in this process are also exponentially higher than what they are otherwise supposed to be. To quote a representative of Raheja developers,”The cost of laying these networks now is almost triple of what it would have been had it been done in time. The economics of the exercise is a great deterrent in establishing a water distribution network and all builders try to find ways to minimise the costs incurred. You’ll see sewage systemsonly on maps, not on the ground.”
DLF: The State’s Substitute?
The HUDA is chiefly held responsible for providing services and basic amenities like electricity, water etc. till the time the primary construction and development is complete. Haryana Development and Regulation of Urban Areas Act (1975) permitted the state authorities to sell land to private players for commercial purposes. Thereafter, the role of the private players has been of immense importance. Considering that Gurgaon has a massive stretch of commercial space, the privateplayers have almost assumed the role of the state itself as each private player is responsible for providing water to his own constituency. Thus, it is chiefly DLF, one of the biggest private players in Gurgaon, that is seen as playing the role of the state in the area as it exercises a great degree of autonomy given the share it has in property ownership in the region.
A major problem that underlies this system is that there is centralisation of power in the hands of the private players. Stakeholders like DLF have often been accused of following the developer’s model that is quintessentially profit oriented and not focused much on providing services. The situation spirals into further mess as the government institutions that are supposed to control the private stakeholders are themselves not powerful enough to do so. There’s no form of state apparatus whatsoever to keep a check on private construction activities. More importantly, the very fact that HUDA by itself does not have the bandwidth to manage water supply across Gurgaon gives the private players a sense of confidence and great powers to exercise. Owing to lack of options, HUDA is more often than not goaded into leaving the water distribution system to private developers. This is not a scenario specific to the supply of water.
Forest Area of Gurgaon
The reckless deforestation in Aravalli’s by developers such as Ansals, which recently developed its retreat close to the forested area Badshahpur, which accelerated the construction of farmhouses on the Aravalli hills by rich industrialists with enough muscle to bend the government’s diktat. Mangarboli, known for the sacred Mangar forest, has been witnessing a continuous struggle between the residents and developers. As is always the case, the government sides with these deeppocketed developers and residents wage a unfruitful battle. Less than two months ago, Times of India reported that 150 trees were cut in densely forested parts of Mangar, off the Gurgaon-Faridabad highway. Villagers saw the timber being transported in trucks and reported it to the Forest department, which didn’t care to respond. Most of Gurgaon’s current water problems have been because of the negligence and indifference of the governmental authorities towards natural resources. Activists in the area feel that it’s an effort by the developers to make the area look denuded so that no policy can designate the area as a “forest” and protect it from urbanisation. Land in Mangar is largely under private ownership with huge tracts of forested land owned by real estate companies. It is not categorised as forest-land but has all the features of a forest, such as a thriving wildlife that includes leopards, jackals and rare birds. Mangar also acts as a corridor for animals from the Asola Bhatti sanctuary, which has a protected status, and also acts as an important groundwater recharge zone for Delhi.
The NCR regional plan, which was has been finalised recently, could have acted as a safeguard for the Mangar forest but the National Capital Regional Planning Board (NCRPB) removed an important clause that limited constructions to 0.5% in ecologically sensitive zones including Aravallis. According to the report, The Prime Minister’s office had recently written to the urban development ministry asking them not to approve such a plan without addressing environmental concerns. The Central Public Works Department (CPWD) and the Delhi CM’s office (during Arvind Kejriwal’s tenure) had also written to Haryana government about this.
Is the Future Doomed?
Reports by Forbes and Caravan predict a doomed future for Gurgaon. Though Gurgaon won’t necessarily be a ‘dead city’ as is claimed by journalistic reports, but it’s true that its current rate of growth is not sustainable. The predictions of Gurgaon Water Board claim that Gurgaon will almost run out of groundwater by 2016 given its current rate of consumption.
Gurgaon was completely dependent on groundwater until 1995 when the city authorities built a 69km channel to bring water from the Western Yamuna Canal. But this canal meets a mere 30 percent of the city’s water needs. Groundwater, therefore, has remained the key source. Unchecked use of groundwater in the city has resulted in water tables falling at a rate of 13metres a year.
Following this, an interim order passed in February 2011 by the Punjab and Haryana High Court had ordered the city’s authorities to restrict the use of groundwater to drinking and domestic purposes only and use of groundwater for construction was banned. It had also ordered sealing of borewells used by builders. But none of the directives were carried out in earnest. A few hundred borewells were sealed, but many of them are operational once again, say residents.
In March 2012, the Court had directed the Central Ground Water Authority (CGWA) to file a comprehensive affidavit by May 1, 2012 outlining how it would regulate groundwater use. The Court has also been asking CGWA for details of groundwater levels in the fast expanding industrial and financial hub. The CGWA claims that it cannot ascertain the details as it has neither the money nor the staff to do so. The way forward in this bleak scenario is possible only if developers and builders get together and collaborate with HUDA to complete the undone work of the canal and put in networks in places as per requirement. This will be the first step forward in fixing the water distribution system and the sewage system. More water and sewage treatment plants need to come up as the current scenario is one where sewage lines are ideally supposed to go to Sewage Treatment Plants but there aren’t enough plants to facilitate it. So sewage ends up getting discharged into municipal plants instead.
According to Mr. Lalit Sharma of IRRAD, there is a sliver of hope if we somehow check the water of the city within the city – to let it percolate down to recharge the groundwater. Concretisation and paved areas makes the rainwater flow to Nazafgarh drain from where it flows into Yamuna, which prevents natural recharging. “Because of climate change, there is high rainfall – high runoff is generated – which runs off very fast. We can divide the whole city into small areas and we can recharge, locally. Localised recharging is the solution. In a village, it’s easy to put a recharge well.The prices are low. However, here in residential Gurgaon, the park needs to be made into a depression so that all drains lets the water flow and accumulate into the park from where it could percolate down. Sensitising the citizens and the RWAs are the way to go forward.”
The Confederation of Real Estate Developers’ Association of India (Credai) of the NCR region passes the buck on to the state government to find a solution to the problem of shortages of civic infrastructure in the region, as it is conventionally considered to be the sole responsibility of the state and should be provided by the state as there is no shortage of funds for the purpose. The state government does indeed exact External Development Charges (EDC) from developers in advance, at the rate of around Rs 4,000 per sq. metre. HUDA has collected thousands of crores of rupees as EDC but allegations suggest that it has hardly done anything to improve the infrastructure in the city, which has emerged as a major source of tax and other revenues for the country.
The situation in Gurgaon and the PPP model that it follows makes it impossible to isolate one party to place the blame on. The truth is that urbanisation very important and it cannot stop. Till the time all the stakeholders don’t agree to share the responsibility, the way forward will indeed be a rocky terrain.
