The ‘Millenium City’ it may be, but Gurgaon is dealing with the very basic problem of potholed roads and power outages to worsening law and order. This considering that a large number of companies have pumped in billions in investments in the Delhi suburb.

In an unprecedented move to protest against these growing problems, CEOs of a large number of corporations and eminent personalities joined hands in the DLF area to protest against illegal dumping of garbage at Gurgaon-Faridabad road last week.

These included CEOs, lawyers, CAs and doctors who are coming forward to protest against HUDA officials. DLF resident and mother of cricketer Yuvraj Singh was also part of this protest. “Gurgaon is probably among the most expensive places to live in India but it is a pity that we have to live in this life-threatening situation,” she said.

Raman Roy, considered by many to be the father of the business process outsourcing industry, chief of Quattro BPO, warns, “there is a serious risk” that companies that were looking to come to Gurgaon might go for a rethink. “The growing popularity of Manila and Vietnam as an outsourcing destination is a result of our own undoing,” said Roy.

Making it worse is apathy. “What worries me most is that I don’t even see a plan to fix it,” said Marc Vollenweider, CEO of Evalueserve, a knowledge process-outsourcing firm that employs 2,100 people in its Gurgaon offices.

Gurgaon is home to over 2 million people and accounts for more than 10% of India’s $40 billion (about Rs 18, 400 crore) in annual software exports. Some 200 Fortune 500 companies, from General Electric to Coca Cola have offices here.

Gurgaon may have come on top of Bangalore, but that’s not a consolation because it was never meant to compete with other Indian cities. As Roy puts it candidly, “We didn’t want it to be better than the worse. We wanted to be among the best in the world and that’s clearly not happening. The gap with the best, in fact, is growing on a daily basis.”