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Modern India "Edge City" Facing Water Crisis
2008-06-30 11:25:54


Gurgaon is India’s most modern, new high-tech satellite city. It’s near Delhi and has India’s largest mall—it’s going to be the largest mall in Asia. It’s the new center of Delhi, where the big mall centers are, and where everybody’s moving.

It’s where everything that is this great big, consumptive India is happening. Property prices have shot up out of control in Gurgaon. But the water table in Gurgaon is dramatically falling.

New York Times, June 9:: Gurgaon, a largely privately developed city and a metonym for Indian ambition, has seen a building frenzy to satisfy people . . . The city’s population has nearly doubled in the last six years, to 1.5 million. The skyline is dotted with scaffolds. Glass towers house companies like American Express and Accenture . . . Burberry and BMW have set up shop . . . (But) when the scorch of summer hit this north Indian boomtown . . . the municipal water supply worked only a few hours each day . . . The city has neither enough water nor electricity for the population. There is no sewage treatment plant yet.

The Telegraph, May 27: Thirty-four resident associations of Gurgaon today requested the Supreme Court to stop proliferation of commercial complexes and save the city from “complete disaster” as unplanned development had sunk groundwater levels and created a power crisis.


There are farms surrounding Gurgaon that have gone dry. There are people in that live in farm houses with swimming pools and the swimming pools have been attacked by farmers who say that Gurgaon is effectively taking away the ground water.

The farms around the area start to dry up as these new satellite cities form and the ground water is taken away. So there is tension between the urban and rural areas. It’s not like the rural area is far away—it’s right there on the outskirts of the satellite city.

These tensions are going to rise and people that moved there will probably see the first great drop in property prices. Then they’ll wonder, “What happened?” What happens is that people will say, “Why go live there? In five years there’ll be no water there.” People will feel it as the property prices come crashing down, as I predict they will.

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