New Delhi's high-tech suburb drowns in trash as sanitation workers flee

Arab News

2 days ago

NEW DELHI: One of India's most modern, high-tech, and upscale urban centers, Gurugram, is sinking in municipal waste that has not been collected for months, residents say, as sanitation workers have fled fearing a police crackdown on undocumented migrants.
Formerly known as Gurgaon, the city of skyscrapers and luxury apartments is located about 30 km south of New Delhi and was transformed over the last two decades from farming fields into a major hub for technology and outsourcing companies.
While its poor waste management system has made local headlines over the years, the problem worsened recently with garbage piling up in residential areas, sideroads covered in junk and trash burning becoming increasingly commonplace, prompting mass complaints from residents who posted visuals across social media platforms.
'There is a serious crisis in Gurgaon on waste management. Wastes are lying everywhere and the administration does not have a clue how to handle that. This is the crisis created by the administration and its policies,' Saurabh Bardhan, owner of Gurugram-based waste management company Green Bandhu, told Arab News.
Indian authorities have detained hundreds of alleged illegal immigrants in recent months, with a Human Rights Watch report published on Wednesday saying that at least 1,500 ethnic Bengali Muslims were expelled to Bangladesh 'without due process' between May and June, as expulsions continue.
As many of them are employed as informal garbage collectors in Gurugram, the crackdown has affected waste management in the city.
'The migrant workers have been collecting waste for years in this so-called millennium city and they have never bothered to regularize their jobs. These workers were carrying the load of managing the city waste to a great extent,' Bardhan said.
'I heard they are being detained and this has created panic among them. But if we think that only these migrant workers are affected we are wrong. It is the whole society that is suffering because of the government's hasty and unmindful act.'
S.S. Rohilla, public relations officer at the Municipal Corp. of Gurugram, told Arab News on Saturday that the local government is 'trying to resolve the problem,' adding that the situation was 'not as bad' as reported by media outlets.
But for Kalyan Singh, the waste problem in his residential area in Gurugram was a crisis.
'For the last two to three days we have been facing an acute crisis of waste lying everywhere in my (area). Never before have we faced something like this,' Singh told Arab News.
'This problem has cropped up, we learnt, after the migrant Bengali-speaking laborers have left en masse after the government's drive to detain suspected Bangladeshis and foreigners. I hope the situation is addressed soon.'
Meanwhile, other Gurugram residents took to social media to raise concerns over public health risks and express their frustrations with the government.
'Bad roads. Poor waste management. No drainage system. Yet what does the Gurugram gov't. choose to act on? Not infrastructure. Not public welfare. (But) targeting the people who keep this city running — the migrant workers who clean our homes and city,' Aanchal Jauhari wrote on X.
'Health Danger! Sector 70 (of) Gurugram drowning in garbage. Breeding ground for diseases,' another X user, Gautam Dhar, said. 'Please help. Citizen's health (is) at severe risk.'