Malls With No Roads
When I first got off at the Sikanderpur metro stop in Gurgoan, I was greeted with a sweeping view of the surrounding area. “Gurgoan was supposed to show off the New India, but they forgot to remove all this,” a friend told me, gesturing to the shantytown and trash piles lined up next to the metro station. Of course, there’s plenty of New India in Gurgoan, too. Just behind the shantytown, Gurgoan’s “Mall Mile” stretched into the distance, filled with cafes, designer clothing stores, and hip restaurants. The rest of the night would further reinforce my friend’s observation: we took an auto rickshaw to a microbrewery in an ultra-modern glass building that also housed a Mercedes Benz dealership, but the road in front of the building was half asphalt, half dirt and was pitch dark because there was no street lighting. Inside the bar, we were greeted with IPAs and Miley Cyrus at full volume.
Situated south of Delhi in the state of Haryana, Gurgoan sprouted up from farmland, and over the past 25 years the city has grown into a commercial center for Northern India. Today, half of all Fortune 500 companies have a presence in Gurgoan – drawing many middle and upper class professionals to the city. Gurgoan’s quick rise is attributed to a combination of cheap land, lax development regulations, and its proximity to Delhi. Much of the private land in Gurgoan was developed by DLF Limited, one of India’s largest private real estate developers, and it can sometimes feel like the company owns the entire city. A Gurgoan resident could easily live in DLF Phase IV (a residential colony), work in DLF’s Cyber City (an office complex, pictured below), and go out for dinner in DLF’s Grand Mall (or, alternatively, DLF’s Cyber Hub, which is attached to Cyber City)
Private development transformed Gurgoan into the economic powerhouse that it is today, but it has also resulted in a city with practically no public infrastructure. Gurgoan is plagued by poor roads, insufficient waste disposal systems, weak power infrastructure, and a government that is struggling to fix it all. Inside a gated community or mall in Gurgoan, it is easy to forget that you are in a country where nearly 60% of the population lives under $3.10 PPP a day - but step into a public space and you are immediately back in India. Cambridge economist Amartya Sen warned that India is at risk of becoming, “half California, half Sub-Saharan Africa,” and this dynamic is abundantly clear in Gurgoan. These photos hope to show some of the perplexing scenes that one encounters on a daily basis in Gurgoan, with special focus given to the surreal transitions between the city’s public and private spaces.
(If you’d like to read a more comprehensive description of Gurgoan’s development and the problems it faces today, I would highly recommend this New York Times article.)