About the Institution
A civic institution, in the service of memory
Gurgaon Ka Gaurav — the satirical civic record of Gurgaon (Gurugram), Haryana. Reports, rankings and resilience from Cyber City, NH48, Sohna Road, Golf Course Road and every flooded underpass in between.
Established 2009
Other cities are given monuments, and culture, and slogans. They inherit their greatness, and spend their centuries maintaining it.
Gurgaon was given none of these. Gurgaon was given resilience.
Gurgaon Ka Gaurav was founded on a simple conviction: that the experiences which define this city — its traffic, its dust, its seasons of water, its perpetual works — are not failures to be apologised for, but a heritage to be preserved. Where other institutions might have looked at these conditions and seen only inconvenience, we looked, and saw character being formed.
We are a civic and cultural institution, independent and in the service of the public. We keep the record. We maintain the archive. We confer the awards, teach the disciplines, and publish, each year, an honest account of the state of the city’s character. We do this not in jest, nor in complaint, but in the steady belief that what this city asks of its residents is worth remembering, and worth honouring.
For it is our settled view that a city which never tests its people gives them nothing to become. Gurgaon tests its people daily. And in the patience of the stalled commuter, the composure of the citizen in the season of dust, the quiet resourcefulness of the pedestrian who has learned to walk where the footpath used to be — in all of this, we recognise a greatness that no monument could confer, and that we are proud, each day, to preserve.
Our Charter
Four duties, held in perpetuity
To Document
We maintain a continuous and impartial record of the experiences that shape the city, that no achievement of endurance may pass unremembered.
To Preserve
We hold the city’s living traditions — its seasons, its routes, its waits — in trust for the generations who will inherit them, and the character they confer.
To Celebrate
We confer upon the ordinary trials of the city the recognition they have long deserved, that the citizen may see in their daily resilience a thing of genuine worth.
To Instruct
We teach the disciplines of the city, that each new resident may be equipped not merely to survive it, but to understand it, and in time, to love it.
Governance
The organs of the institution
The Office of Civic Memory
Custodian of the Record
Maintains the archive, the rankings and the register of living practice.
The Department of Civic Excellence
Administrative Organ
Sets strategic priority and publishes the Annual Report on the State of Civic Character.
The Survival Academy
Teaching Faculty
Confers the city’s recognised certifications in urban resilience.
The Awards Jury
Convened Annually
Deliberates upon, and confers, the Gurgaon Gaurav Awards.
Begin Anywhere