Sarika Kapoor lives in a spacious home in one of the wealthiest cities in India. But something as simple as having a shower is fraught with problems.
Most days there is just a trickle of water from
the taps and sometimes even that dries up before noon. The 56-year-old
has often had to scurry to a neighbour across a potholed road to borrow a
bucket of water and haul it back to her rented $300,000 home, sweat
rolling down her face.
"Every
morning I have to decide whether I want the upper half of my body clean
or my lower half. With the amount of water we get, it's impossible to
take a full-body bath," Kapoor said, sitting in her large, well-lit
living room.
Welcome to Gurgaon, a
city of wealthy urban professionals with gleaming shopping malls,
five-star hotels and sprawling golf courses on the southern outskirts of
New Delhi that is a symbol of newly affluent India.
But
crippling power and water shortages, crater-riddled roads and open
sewage drains have made it an extreme example of the poor infrastructure
that is constraining growth in Asia's third-largest economy.
"Gurgaon
is just a symbol of beautiful buildings. Otherwise it's rubbish," said
P.K. Jain, the founder-president of the Gurgaon Chamber of Commerce and
Industry. "Ultimately, the town is going to collapse."
Alongside
the towering residential condominiums are glass and steel office
blocks. The India offices of some of the world's best known companies
are here, including Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O), Google Inc. (GOOG.O) and agribusiness giant Cargill Inc. CARG.UL
But public infrastructure has failed to keep pace with the rapid growth unleashed by landmark economic reforms in 1991.
The
provision of essential services is so bad that many companies and
residents rely on expensive diesel generators to beat power cuts, pay
private water tankers to deliver door-to-door when the taps run dry.
But
demand outstrips supply, and with long power outages of up to eight
hours a day, even well-off citizens are sometimes forced to have dinner
by candlelight.
This week,
residents erupted in anger over the lack of water and power during the
hottest summer in the region for three decades. They took to the streets
in protest and set tyres on fire to block traffic.
Nevertheless,
Gurgaon has some of the fastest growing property prices in the world,
with rates for some upscale homes nearly doubling to 21,000 rupees a
square foot in 2011 from about 11,000 rupees in 2008, according to a
report by Citibank.
At current
prices, a 2,000 square foot apartment in those areas would cost
$760,000. At the very top end, huge 5,500 square foot apartments set
around a golf course sell for about $3 million.
TWO CITIES
Like
many other Indian cities, Gurgaon is made up of two parts. The highway
to New Delhi separates the new from the old, which is still a
traditional market town serving farmers in the region.
The
new Gurgaon shot up out of farmland two decades ago, mainly to cater to
the overflowing population of the nearby capital. It is now India's
third-wealthiest city by per-capita income, and its population has
climbed to more than 1.5 million from just 900,000 in 2001.
Gurgaon
has also become one of the hubs for the IT and outsourcing boom that
drove India's economic growth from the 1990s, giving it the name
"Millennium City".
Experts say the
boom caught local authorities unawares, and they did not plan adequately
for the power and water needs of a rapidly expanding population.
A company like DLF (DLF.NS),
which has been buying up chunks of land in Gurgaon since the 1970s to
convert into residential compounds, commercial hubs and shopping
centres, has set up its own private infrastructure network.
Pockets of Gurgaon developed by DLF have their own back-up power plant, water recycling systems and solar power heating.
"I
don't think the government anticipated the level of growth or the
problems that come with it and therefore, has no plan for it," Mohit
Gujral, vice chairman and managing director of DLF India, told Reuters.
"We are changing the urban landscape of the city because we have been allowed to get involved."
DLF
recently launched its own fire brigade equipped with Mercedes fire
trucks imported from Finland. In a public-private partnership PPP.L with
the state, it also started building a $100 million, 16-lane highway
running through the city.
Vishwas
Udgirkar, a senior director at consultants Deloitte India, believes
Gurgaon's good security, recreational centres, shopping areas, eateries
and cinema complexes attract more people and companies to the city every
year.
"But come to the public infrastructure, it's pathetic," said Udgirkar, whose office is in the city.
"In terms of governance, again it's pathetic. I don't know who would still call it 'Millennium City'. It cannot be."
WASTE NOT, WANT NOT
This
summer, with temperatures soaring to 47 degrees Celsius (117 F),
Gurgaon residents grappled with the city's worst-ever power and water
crisis as supplies fell to 15 percent of the normal volume.
In
the city, pigs wallowed in fetid bug-infested ponds to beat the heat as
huge billboard advertisements promised condominiums with 24-hour
electricity and "world-class" facilities.
Every
day, from the small hours of the morning to late in the night,
residents uncoiled and hooked up water hoses linking private water
tankers parked outside their homes to tanks inside, replacing the
municipal water supply.
Power supply has been similarly erratic.
As
has happened in much of India, red tape has held up coal supplies to
power plants that supply Gurgaon's electricity. Technical glitches have
caused more disruptions.
In one of
Gurgaon's most upscale neighbourhoods, a row of cars, including two
BMWs, glistens in the sun outside a three-storey bungalow. But
Purushotam, the caretaker of the household, said on some days he barely
got a full bucket of water to clean the luxury cars.
"We
don't have enough water to drink, how can we take elaborate baths and
clean the cars? Water is like gold to us now," he chuckled.
For
the thousands of migrants eking out a living in Gurgaon, working at
construction sites or as household servants, life is even tougher as
they are priced out of basic services that the private sector provides.
"The
diesel generators are too expensive. And we don't even go to the
air-conditioned malls for respite," said Naresh Kumar, who earns $150 a
month as a water delivery man and says he cannot afford the fare to go
to the city's shopping district.
GURGAON, THE 'AMERICA' OF INDIA?
Many
of Gurgaon's problems - a lack of administrative will, shoddy
infrastructure and a lackadaisical attitude to civic services - are
reflected across India.
Although
the country has some state-of-the-art airports, multi-billion dollar
national highways and a Formula One race track, much of its existing
infrastructure has been unable to cope, and slums are mushrooming next
to highrises in its cities.
Facing a
barrage of criticism over his government's handling of the economy,
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in June promised to help resuscitate the
country's slumping growth by fast-tracking more than 200 key
infrastructure projects.
New Delhi
hopes to invest $1 trillion to beef up India's infrastructure over the
next five years. But the unlevelled roads and heaps of garbage lying in
the empty housing lots of Gurgaon reflect how far India has to go.
"It
is an unplanned city," said Abhaya Agarwal, a partner at Ernst and
Young. "For now it's running on water tankers and generators but in the
long run it is not good for the nation."
He
said that while privatised services are a short-term solution, the real
answer to Gurgaon's mess is more PPP investment in infrastructure.
Gurgaon's
authorities acknowledge their failures but also blame the city's
residents for wasting water, which - like many services in India - is
heavily subsidised.
"The problem
is that people take water for granted," said Praveen Kumar, an
administrator at the Haryana Urban Development Authority.
"We as a city have to improve our systems and so does the government. There are many hiccups in every set-up." he said.
Purushotam, the caretaker in the upscale neighbourhood, says generators and water tankers are keeping the city on life support.
"We
moved to Gurgaon in 2005 thinking that this is the 'America of India',"
he said. "But except the malls, not much is 'American' here."
By Annie Banerji@Reuters
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