Expanding NCR

A NEW city is planned near Gurugram in Haryana. It is envisioned as a place larger than Chandigarh, and is to cater to the ever-expanding needs of the National Capital Region. The rationale for the new city is clear, but as the Gurugram experience has shown, there are bound to be problems, including those of the basic infrastructure, like lack of water that has bedevilled the city. Consulting a good urban planner is one thing, but translating it into reality another, as we have even found in Chandigarh, arguably still the best planned city in the nation, albeit one under strain. 

Even as the Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation is the lead agency for the project, it is clear that much is being expected from the PPP model, which has some inherent limitations. Now that a new city is on the drawing board, there is no reason why mass urban mobility should not be a fulcrum around which to plan the area. Indeed, modern eco-friendly construction techniques should be used for the buildings, making the city as green as possible. At the same time, adequate provision must be made for extension that is inevitable in magnets that such cities become.

Even as the city is being planned, a critical eye has to be cast at its neighbour, Gurugram, which has vast swathes of desolate, unfinished construction projects that are concrete expressions of broken dreams of many a middle-class family. Indeed, even before the new city progresses, effort needs to be made to improve Gurugram’s infrastructure and provide the necessary impetus to builders to finish their projects and hand them to their clients. Planned urban habitations attract the rapacious — right from speculators, and builders to squatters who settle down in the periphery awaiting “regularisation”.  A test of the administration is to ensure that it does not happen at all, or is nipped in the bud. This will need a great deal of vigilance, and a political will to open both eyes, not turn a Nelson’s eye. The new city would give Haryana a chance to showcase its strengths, and provide residents with a place they can be proud of.