Is Gurgaon a comfortable place to live in? This was the first query that I was thrown at by my girlfriend the other day when I confided to her my plan of purchasing a residential house in the corporate hub. Being accustomed to the life of the city for several years, Sara, an executive with an airlines company, took strong exceptions to my preference of opting for an investment in the residential sector in this upcoming urban centre. She triggered a volley of offensives before which I plummeted defenseless. Her offensive armory was aplenty. In fact she had her own reasons for such reservations.

With tom-tom and fanfare, Gurgaon is widely circulated as a blissful haven and comfortable place to live in. Sara told the experience of her family friend, Michael Samson, who had purchased a prime residential property in a posh locality of the city. Amongst the umpteen woes, stemming from ill-equipped infrastructure and underdeveloped local administration network, the foremost cause of agony is acute power shortage. The land is an arid stretch with scanty rainfall and high temperature round the year except during winter. Most often, in the scorching heat you can be bedeviled by the insistent power-cuts that can sometimes be for as long as 8 to 10 hours routinely with intermittent intervals. In the state, hydroelectric power is at a deficiency. But it can be supplemented by borrowing power form neighboring states as well as resorting to other means of power generation. However, there is an obvious lacuna in the governmental initiative to install alternative power plants such as thermal to tide over the deficiency. Only those are rich enough to maintain power backup systems can comfortably live in the sultry and torrid air. How can in such a milieu Gurgaon be a comfortable place to live in?

Another prominent factor cropping up as a deterrent to Gurgaon being a confortable place to live in is the paucity of sophisticated urban transportation. Poor roads and infrastructure base render riding inside the city a nightmare. Once the proposed Gurgaon Metro Rail project is implemented, it can to a great extent solve the commuters woes. But the project is still on the anvil and faces incessant hurdles. The city is yet to evolve its urban transportation infrastructure. City buses are the need of the hour. Estimably, nearly 40% of the revenue of the state is generated from the district of Gurgaon. Even then, the Government does not pay adequate attention to the infrastructure development of the region.