A common man’s dream of a walkable and safe Gurugram

Looking back, he said he could not have known how deeply the city would shape both his professional journey and his identity as a citizen, husband, father

He stumbled upon Gurugram in a way that he said he could have never planned. His company, Nagarro, moved to the city before he did – shifting around 2000 from a modest floor above a shop in Delhi’s Rajdhani Enclave to a shed in Udyog Vihar. At the time, it was a bold step for a 25-person start-up, said Manas Human.

Manas Human at his home in Gurugram. (Parveen Kumar/HT Photo)

Looking back, he said he could not have known how deeply the city would shape both his professional journey and his identity as a citizen, husband, and father. “The city became home for both Nagarro and me. The company grew into thousands of people. But I stayed rooted in the same apartment in South City 1. It’s where I met my wife, where our children were born, and where I realised they, too, could proudly call themselves Haryanvi,” said Human.

The biggest shift Gurugram brought him, however, was not professional or even personal – it was civic. “I learnt that you only truly live when you involve yourself in your environment as a citizen,” he said.

Paying taxes or casting a vote every five years was not enough. For him, it became about stepping out, engaging with the surroundings, and caring for the place one lives in.

“That involvement gives you a sense of richness and belonging that nothing else can.”

Through this journey, he said he met remarkable people who shared his passion for change. Some were government officers who, despite bureaucratic limitations, showed openness and eagerness to collaborate with citizens and corporations. Others were entrepreneurs and journalists willing to carve out time for causes bigger than themselves. These encounters expanded his world beyond the walls of his office.

“They helped me see what civic courage looks like.”

My cause: walkability

The issue that came to matter most to him was walkability, he said.

“It may sound simple, but it is profound. A person should be able to walk on the streets of their city with safety, convenience, and dignity. Yet in Gurugram, as in so many Indian cities, this is nearly impossible,” he said.

“I cannot walk safely to my neighbourhood market. Parents cannot walk their children to nearby schools. Footpaths, where they exist, are broken or swallowed by illegal parking. Highways slice through neighbourhoods without safe crossings. Drivers speed without respect for pedestrians or cyclists. The result is fear, not freedom.”

He described this phenomenon as the absence of sadak sabhyata—civic culture on the streets.

“How ironic it is that in a land that built urban marvels like Rakhigarhi thousands of years ago, we have cities where the most basic human act – walking – is unsafe,” he said.

And yet, he had also seen glimmers of hope. When the Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA) planned to convert Anath Road near his office into a wide highway, cutting down hundreds of trees, he and his colleagues intervened.

“We worked with them to design something different: Sanath Road. Today, this road preserves its trees, has shaded footpaths, cycling tracks, and flowering plants. Drivers behave differently here. It feels less like a highway and more like a street where people belong. That showed me that behaviour can change when infrastructure prioritises people, not just cars.”

This, he stressed, remains his dream for Gurugram. A city where neighbours can stroll to the market, where children walk to school without fear, and where streets feel like they belong to humans and not just machines.

“But for this dream to be real, citizens like us must demand it. We must give up illegal parking. We must learn to drive gracefully, as people do in the cities we admire. We must embrace pedestrian-first infrastructure and public transport over our obsession with cars.”

Despite Gurugram’s ambition, energy, and opportunity, he worries that the younger generation often feels eager to leave. They do not yet feel the city belongs to them. To him, the answer is clear: if the city wants them to stay, build their lives, and nurture their dreams here, then it must offer them a city worth loving.

“Because in the end, it is simple—birds fly, fish swim, and humans walk. If we cannot walk in our own city with dignity, then we have failed to build a home worth living in.”

For him, a walkable Gurugram is not just a dream but a prayer—for his children, for his neighbours, and for every citizen who longs to belong.

“Only when we reclaim our streets for people will this city truly become our home.”

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Manas Human, a resident of Sushant Lok 1, is the co-founder of Nagarro and Custodian of Entrepreneurship