News: Gurugram Flooding: Ex-HUDA Chief Says City Planned Wrong-06-09-2026
Each monsoon, clips of waterlogged Gurugram streets spread across social media, and this year is no different, with images of people wading through water and vehicles struggling on flooded roads.
MG Devasahayam, former Chief Administrator of the Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA), traces the problem to the city’s early planning. He said the original vision for Gurugram in the 1980s violated basic town-planning principles, and quoted a Tamil proverb: "If the first thing is wrong, everything is wrong."
Urban development, he said, must match the natural terrain and its carrying capacity. The region suited only "low-rise, low-density" development but was built on a "high-rise, high-density" real estate model. He also pointed to the lack of natural drainage: unlike historical cities built along rivers, Gurugram had no natural water sources or adequate drainage network.
Heavy rain routinely cripples movement. Commercial stretches such as Golf Course Road and the Delhi-Gurugram Expressway near Cyber Hub get waterlogged, as do IFFCO Chowk and Sohna Road. Offices sometimes mandate work from home and schools suspend physical classes.
Ayush (name changed), who moved to the city in 2025 for a job, said he had thought Gurugram meant "stepping into the future". He comes from West UP, where roads clear quickly even after heavy monsoon rain. Here, despite paying high rent, he once spent two hours stranded on his two-wheeler in a puddle outside his PG, and friends asked whether he needed a boat to reach office. Nobody had told him, he said, that monsoon preparation in Gurugram means packing extra trousers and hoping to get back before 10 pm after leaving office at 7, a trip that usually takes 15 minutes.
