‘Untidy’ Gurgaon village has no brides to welcome

Sumedha Sharma

Tribune News Service

Gurgaon, July 5

Having been blacklisted by majority of state communities and panchayats for marriage alliances owing to lack of cleanliness, the Bandhwari village panchayat in Gurgaon district has decided to approach Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a solution.

At a village meeting held recently, the panchayat, headed by sarpanch Rati Devi, has formed a committee of representatives who would go to Delhi and try to meet PM Narendra Modi to apprise him of the true facet of his much professed Swacch Bharat Abhiyan, which is now being a hurdle in finding prospective matches for residents.

“The MP of the area came here during the inauguration of the Swacch Bharat Abhiyan. Since then, nobody has come here to help us. We sacrificed our health, peace and standard of living, so that the twin towns of Gurgaon and Faridabad could flourish, but we can’t take it anymore. People have stopped giving their daughters in marriage to our youths,” said the sarpanch.

Drive 12 km away from the swanky malls of Gurgaon and Bandhwari village welcomes all with unbearable stink. Better known for a waste treatment plant that lies shut for almost a year, this village is bearing the cost of rapid urbanisation of Gurgaon and Faridabad, as over 25 acres of its land lie burdened with around 10 lakh metric tonnes of garbage with 1,000 tonnes of untreated waste being added every day at this plant.

Over 5,000 residents of the village have been living in bad conditions for long, but what they are most worried about is the fact that they may soon have no brides.

“The village has become a dumping yard. Would they have remained silent if the garbage was dumped outside the swanky malls of Gurgaon? The youth here already face health issues ranging from premature ageing to cancer, but now, with many of our allied villages passing a resolution against marrying their daughters here, we need to take some stern steps,” said Vijay Pal, a villager.

The waste management plant has been dysfunctional since 2013. The Municipal Corporation, Gurgaon (MCG), has been claiming it would restart the plant soon, but has failed to do so. MCG officials said the corporation was yet to finalise another private agency to operate the plant.