- By Akansha Pandey
- Wed, 10 Sep 2025 12:09 PM (IST)
- Source:Jagran News Network
Many cities in the country are setting an example by making great improvements in the Clean Air Survey, but Gurugram has been left far behind in this campaign for clean air. The city's Air Quality Index (AQI) is typically above 200 on normal days, and it crosses the 400 mark during Diwali and the winter season. This situation clearly shows that the efforts to control pollution on the ground are failing.
The top-ranking cities in the Clean Air Survey have adopted several new techniques and measures, such as paving roads from edge to edge, using machines for sweeping (mechanical sweeping), treating old legacy waste (bioremediation), managing construction and demolition (C&D) waste, creating green belts and Miyawaki forests, implementing smart traffic management, and shifting industries to clean fuel. Gurugram is lagging badly on all these points.
Here are some of Gurugram's major failures:
- The pollution monitoring equipment in the city hasn't even been working for the last six months.
- There is a huge pile of about 1.3 million tons of old garbage that hasn't been dealt with in the last 15 years. Neither has the process of treating this old waste sped up, nor is solid waste being managed properly.
- Burning garbage in the open has become a common problem across the city.
- The Municipal Corporation has 16 mechanical sweeping machines for cleaning roads, but they are not used in a systematic way. Due to a lack of monitoring and roads full of potholes, these machines can't run properly, which means dust and pollution remain as they are.
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Debris Taking Over Government Land
In Sector 29, a mountain of debris has piled up on valuable, multi-billion rupee land belonging to the Haryana Urban Development Authority (HSVP). For the past four years, a "debris mafia" has been illegally dumping waste here at night, but neither HSVP nor the Municipal Corporation seems to be taking any notice. This problem is not limited to just Sector 29; debris is being dumped all over the city, including on government land in Sector 10 and along roads like the Golf Course Extension Road. Surprisingly, the Municipal Corporation has already spent Rs 100 crore on debris disposal in the last five years.
The Ground Reality in the City:
- There is a plant in the Basai area that makes bricks and tiles from C&D waste (debris), but its capacity is only 300 tons.
- In contrast, the city generates over 1,200 tons of debris every day.
- The city has more than 750,000 residential, commercial, institutional, and industrial units.
- These homes and establishments produce 1,200 tons of garbage daily, which is also not being disposed of properly.
