Gurgaon: The City That Pays to Stay Dirty

Photo / Representational

In the quiet of midnight, when cities breathe and roads empty out, a different kind of machinery is supposed to come alive. In Gurgaon, fifteen sweeping machines—each a modern marvel of municipal ambition—are contracted to ply the city’s arteries, scrubbing away the dust of the day. But according to internal data and a quietly tense virtual meeting this week, the machines are largely asleep at the wheel.

One machine, officials revealed, clocked in just twenty-eight minutes of operation in a night. That’s less time than a sitcom episode—and a far cry from the all-night labor these machines are ostensibly paid for. Each month, the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) writes a cheque for Rs 70.5 lakh, not including diesel, to its contractor. At Rs 4.7 lakh per machine per month, the promise was clean, dust-free boulevards. The reality, however, appears grimy and indifferent.

The story emerged from a virtual meeting on Monday, led by Vikas Gupta, Haryana’s Commissioner and Secretary for Urban Local Bodies. Gupta, known for a preference for crisp accountability, reportedly directed the MCG to prepare a list of private contractors in the city’s solid waste and development ecosystem for possible blacklisting—an administrative death sentence rarely spoken aloud.

There was cause for such sternness. The data, uploaded on the department’s Solid Waste Management (SWM) portal, painted a picture of sluggish machines and unaccounted routes. No answers came when MCG officials were pressed about the numbers. Over in Faridabad, the scene wasn’t any better. Their machines too, the data showed, had developed a curious allergy to work.

Earlier this month, on April 7, an inspection along the Southern Peripheral Road to Vatika Chowk revealed sheets of undisturbed dust along the curb—a poet might have called it neglect made visible. The left side of one major road lay untouched, raising questions about the machine’s calibration—or its motivation. The consequence: a modest Rs 25,000 fine, less a deterrent than a note of disapproval.

It is a quiet failure, the kind that unfolds not in dramatic scandals but in the mundane ineffectiveness of machines that do not sweep, and agencies that do not supervise. And yet the stakes are not small. In cities where air quality frequently dips into the dangerous, where every particle of dust is another breath made heavier, these neglected machines are not just a symbol of civic failure—they’re its agents.

And so, in the bureaucratic silence after a late-night Zoom call, the city awaits. For answers. For accountability. For someone to turn the brushes back on.