But the private players providing services in the city have created additional problems. For starters, the groundwater level in the city has depleted due to the private borewells and the lack of proper sewage system has polluted nearby rivers and lands. This unplanned urbanised and developed city is now facing the disadvantages of spatial clustering. The excessive clustering of businesses and people has led to overcrowding, increased land prices, and longer commuting timing.

All of these factors make a region unproductive for business and the developmental cycle of a city comes full circle. The causes of agglomeration that had brought about the success of a city in the first place become inimical to its own progress. The relocation of Maruti’s plant is symbolic of such a deagglomeration phase of development for Gurugram.

However, this does not necessarily imply an inevitable demise for the city. New York city, which was an economic centre for America as the shipping route for the country passed through it, managed to find itself on the brink of bankruptcy by the 1970s as commodity shipping moved northwards to a larger canal. But the city quickly reinvented itself into a financial hub as the country moved towards a service-based economy where economic density and human capital are valued more than infrastructural facilities. Another American city, Detroit, which was a manufacturing hub at one point of time, failed to make a similar transformation with the times and perished in the process.