Kolkata floods, Gurugram congestion signal risks for India’s emerging cities

As India lurches towards its 'Viksit Bharat' ambitions, a new constellation of cities, including Pune, Ujjain, Bhubaneswar, Hosur, Dholera and Greater Noida, are surging to prominence. This breakneck expansion demands a closer look at two cautionary precedents already on the map: Kolkata and Gurugram.

Kolkata's floods this week - claiming at least 10 lives, including 9 electrocution deaths - during the city's heaviest rainfall in four decades, only highlight long-existing critical weaknesses in sustainable urban planning, implementation of public policies and risks of density. It has also revealed coordination failures, where multiple agencies managing different infra systems have created accountability gaps that undermine urban safety.

In the metropolitan sprawl of Kolkata, colonial foundations and industrial clusters strain under population pressures. Several state policies, such as West Bengal Investment and Industrial Policy 2013, aimed to attract investments and provide faster approvals for services like environmental clearances and power connections, along with sector-specific policies for jute, steel and heavy industries, as well as the West Bengal Industrial Corridor Policy 2023.


Today, Kolkata's economy spans steel, heavy engineering, mining, pharma and IT services, contributing 30% of West Bengal's GDP despite covering just 1,850 sq km. Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority, established in 1970, manages this complex urban system across 3 municipal corporations and 38 municipalities, creating India's most densely populated metropolitan area at 8,500 persons per sq km. This explosive population growth has led to issues of accommodation, poor waste management and sanitation, and ineffective water supply.

Meanwhile, Gurugram, a satellite city, has vaulted from farmland to a financial hub in a single generation. In the 1990s-2000s, it witnessed improved productivity through strategic investments, innovation, a favourable regulatory environment and connectivity with Delhi. Within NCR, Gurugram showed the highest increase in urban infrastructure development. Built-up area out of its total area mushroomed from 10% (50.6 sq km) in 1990 to 17.25% (80.5 sq km) in 2002, which further increased to 45.1% (210.4 sq km) in 2018, revealing the scale of transformation.

The city reported success in most metrics, achieving India's second-highest per-capita income at ₹9.05 lakh, right behind Telangana's Ranga Reddy district at ₹9.46 lakh. Gurugram also records one of India's highest car ownership rates - 323 vehicles per 1,000 residents. It attracts over 350 Fortune 500 companies, alongside luxury residential developments and corporate offices. But this trajectory has eventually reached an inflexion point.

The very factors that enabled Gurugram's success are now turning into constraining factors to liability and operational efficiency. It's nearing its maximum threshold for human, environmental and vehicle density. Sky-high rents and scarce affordable housing force thousands to commute from surrounding areas. The average commute time from Delhi to Gurugram is 1.5-2 hours, with recent incidents documenting 7-km traffic jams lasting up to 8 hours during the monsoons.

According to GMDA's mobility management plan, 21.9 lakh daily intra-city trips occur, of which 85% trips are taken for work or education-related activities. Considering modest minimum wages in India, traffic congestion can result in an estimated loss of 1.17 bn human-hours, and economic loss of up to $1.3 bn.

Similar to Kolkata, climate vulnerability compounds Gurugram's density and urban planning challenges. In summers, it becomes an urban heat-island, reporting the highest land surface temperature variations among NCR satellite cities. During rains, roads flood and paralyse transport, driven by concrete surfaces, reduced vegetation and increased built-up areas. This stems from decisions made during the rapid development phase, as well as the consistent neglect of climate- and people-responsive planning.

Strategic legislations in the 1970s to enable large-scale land acquisition for private firms to develop townships by relaxing Notified Area Council (NAC) norms - like Haryana Development and Regulation of Urban Areas Act of 1975, and Haryana Urban Development Authority Act of 1977 - led to government fragmentation, with multiple agencies operating with overlapping jurisdictions, but lacking effective coordination and accountability mechanisms.

This led to an unregulated building spree, which ultimately transformed into an environmental crisis due to the oversight of regulations, climate change and inadequate sustainable urban development strategies. The widespread encroachment and construction activities on natural drainage systems, including nullahs, wetlands, riverbeds and historical water bodies that previously functioned as flood management infrastructure, have marred natural channels of water flow, reducing the hydraulic capacity to manage monsoon runoff and contributing to the severity of waterlogging issues.

These issues also create mobility and accessibility challenges for the working population, along with urban design inadequacies like insufficient highway connections and exit points, which hinder circular movement of people and resources, resulting in recurring traffic bottlenecks. To achieve sustainable urban design, corporate buildings have achieved LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design)-sustainable certifications, and commitments to net-zero by 2050 have been made. But the broader infra framework incentivises carbon-intensive transportation patterns.

To enhance the current limited metro connectivity, GMDA launched a Comprehensive Mobility Plan, which estimated that 1,550 buses would be needed by 2026. The current fleet has only 200 operational CNG buses (150 in Gurugram, 50 in Faridabad).

Looking ahead, Gurugram's strategies should heavily rely on sustainable urban planning strategies and decongestion. Developing sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS), like permeable pavements, rain gardens and retention ponds, can help manage runoff more effectively. This can be achieved by implementing a system of proactive maintenance, regular drain desilting and inter-agency coordination.

Both Kolkata and Gurugram reflect the flip side of agglomeration economics: if cities don't adapt, the agglomeration effect disappears. The same forces that drive growth can harden into liabilities - from flooding to intense heat-island effects and flimsy infra - when foresight and climate-responsive planning fall woefully short.

The writer is chair, Institute for Competitiveness. Inputs from Nabha Joshi