Electricity in most parts of the city is a rare commodity during the day, ask the poor housewife who puts up with the worst during her busiest hours.

Water that comes in the 'direct' taps is brown at most times, people who can afford to do so, are switching to RO filters to avoid the high TDS levels that exist in Gurgaon suppply water.

The sewage drains are overflowing, or are being diverted into rain water drains in colonies like Palam Vihar, an extremely unhygienic practice considering that these rain water drains are all open to the sky and are now fresh breeding grounds for mosquitoes and soon dengue.

Public Transport, the less said the better, all are eagerly waiting for the Metro coming to Gurgaon to end their woes, but the two governments can't seem to decide on who should pay for how much and it remains a discussion point between the two, despite the fact that there is literally nothing as an option.

So why do people move to Gurgaon ? Why is there a real estate boom happening here, which is far out performing the DND-connected-Noida? How come people are willing pay ridiculously large sums of money for plots/apartments which were not worth half that amount as recently as two years back ?

The story begins a couple of years back, the move to Gurgaon was largely driven by the Corporates, around 1999-2000 when the dot com boom was occurring and there was a new IT Company or MNC back office being setup by the day, business districts like Connaught place and Nehru Place did not have the kind of space that these new firms were demanding. So most turned to Gurgaon, which was closer to the Airport and offered ample real estate space under one roof, as against setting up office in three different parts of Delhi, like some corporates were forced to.

So, you had corporates running private generators, as DHBVN had no surplus power for them, procuring mineral water dispensers by the dozens as the supply water was either not drinkable or not available to start with, and they began the now legendary, Pick-n-drop facility for their employees because these new offices were far from the existing profitable charter bus routes of CP and Nehru Place. All this, to either avoid steep rents in the available business districts, or because of the non-availability of ample space.

Soon you had bone-tired call centre employees and others, some of who had married their colleagues, who they had got to know better in the long rides to and fro from work, getting tired of the long rides, wanting to find an affordable place closer to work. These were either the trendy young ones, the DINKY couple (Double Income No Kids for the uninitiated) of today, who had the money to spend and the desire to own a house of their own or the ones who saw Gurgaon as the only up-market locality still within their reach.

So you had Gurgaon of yore with no civic or for that matter any kind of amenities, suddenly becoming the preferred destination of the house hunter, with other like minded and similar age group couples living in the vicinity, sealing the deal.

Its come a long way today, with it being referred to as the city of malls, the new IT capital and the back office and manufacturing hub for India, but its still got a long way to go, hopefully the Haryana government, for which this golden goose of a city is the largest revenue earner in the state, will at some point decide that the time has come to give back to the Corporates and the people a small percentage of the investment they have made in this city, in the form of simple infrastructure and basic civic amenities.

Maybe after the Mall boom and the expressway settles in, we can then focus on schools,  Colleges and hospitals.