Bilkul Sateek News
Gurugram (Paridhi Dhasmana), 1 September – The monsoon has clocked in and, like clockwork, so have the potholes. Within hours of a heavy downpour that’s been battering the region, water began accumulating on major thoroughfares – turning sleek boulevards into knee-deep inconvenience and drivers into unwilling amphibians. Videos circulating from the ground show water pooling fast, traffic grinding to a halt and drains struggling to keep up.
“When the rain signs, the potholes come out to celebrate.” It’s a line that sounds like a protest placard, but it’s also the live reality for commuters tonight. The quip is literal now: luxury SUVs, two-wheelers and ambulances are all sharing one common fate – stalled in waterlogged stretches on roads that were supposed to signal Gurugram’s arrival as a global city.
High-profile voices are finally joining the chorus of exasperated residents. Radhika Gupta, MD & CEO of Edelweiss Mutual Fund, took to X and served the city a one-line editorial that doubles as a diagnosis: rename Golf Course Extension Road to “Pothole Extension Road” – or better, “Crater Connection.” Her jab isn’t snark for sport; it’s a spotlight on a recurring civic embarrassment.
Officials, meanwhile, are offering the familiar repair-script: tenders, timelines, and promises. The state has said ambitious road-revival plans are on the anvil – including project corridors running into thousands of kilometres – and ministers have vowed that works will begin and roads will be made motorable within weeks. But for a city watching its streets drown every monsoon, “tender floated” sounds eerily similar to “promised last year.” The public’s patience is running on fumes.
Urban Local Bodies Minister Vipul Goel’s inspections and assurances to start repair work as rains subside are useful PR bullet points. Yet inspections without immediate, visible action feel like rehearsals for accountability rather than the real thing. Residents don’t need another photo-op; they need drains that work, proper stormwater management, and roads that survive a downpour that IMD and local reports have described as heavier than usual this season.
Here’s the blunt truth: Gurugram’s skyline of billion-rupee flats means little if the ground-level basics keep failing. Fixing façades while ignoring sewers and drains is a perverse form of city-building theatre – expensive and cosmetically impressive, but hollow where it matters. Citizens pay taxes, commuters pay tolls, and homebuyers shell out obscene premiums on real estate — none of that should include an added surcharge of waterlogged commutes.
Short-term triage (pumps, temporary diversions, emergency patching) is necessary now. But medium- and long-term answers are non-negotiable: a mapped, audited drainage network; timely execution of those tenders with transparent contractor accountability; permeable surfaces and retention basins where possible; and a political incentive structure that rewards fixing public goods, not only approving glass towers.
Footage from today’s downpour shows streets already filling up, proving yet again that the monsoon hasn’t met a problem it can’t expose — and that a city’s true infrastructure test isn’t how high it builds, but how well it drains. If Gurugram wants its “Millennium City” label to mean anything beyond glossy brochures, officials must stop renaming problems and start repairing them. The city’s residents – and their engines – have run out of patience.
