From Gurgaon to Gurugram: Fast forward city goes past forward

From Gurgaon to Gurugram: Fast forward city goes past forward

Shubhra Pant | TNN |

GURGAON: A young city brought up on a diet of corporate culture and the good life symbolised by luxury condominiums and glitzy malls, struggled to come to terms with the new identity imposed on it by the Haryana government on Tuesday.
The fashionably , and aspirationally , christened Millennium City was left to grapple with Gurugram after the Khattar regime effected a name change to better reflect the mythological origin of the city’s name than the ‘distorted’ Gurgaon.
There were worries about the impact of the decision on Brand Gurgaon. As a senior executive of an MNC put it, international clients well conversant with Gurgaon would find Gurugram a tongue twister. At the other end of the spectrum, a student, with no such concerns, said Gurugram wasn’t “as cool”. “What is the need to change the name? The current name represents what the spirit of the city,” said Aaina Goyal, who goes to school.

Goodbye, Gurgaon. Khattar government renames it Gurugram
Mohit Thukral, senior vicepresident, Genpact India, saw no benefit for the city in the name change. He felt the government should rather focus on infrastructure development.“Gurgaon is an IT hub with headquarters for many companies with a global clientele. The new name will be more of a tongue twister for them.”

Gurgaon MP and Union minister Rao Inderjit Singh agreed, saying the government now needs to justify the change and work towards development.

Congress’ Ajay Singh Ya dav said a name change won’t fix Gurgaon’s problems. AAP also said the BJP government needed to get its priorities right. “They changed Mewat to Nuh, but that does not change the fact that people in Mewat still do not have water to drink,” said D K Agarwal.

MCG councillor Nisha Singh came down heavily on the decision. “Does the government want to distract our attention from the alleged Murthal rape cases that it so shamelessly tried to bury?”

Times View
The practice of renaming cities, localities, districts or even states in some cases has become distressingly common. Governments must realise that names acquire `brand equity’—they become associated with certain attributes. In this case, for example, the name Gurgaon has come to be associated with a modern metropolis housing some of the biggest names in the knowledge industry, and with being a “millennium city”. All of that hard won brand equity is undone by changing to a name with which nobody has any such associations. Unlike in the case of the change from Bombay to Mumbai, Calcutta to Kolkata, Madras to Chennai or Bangalore to Bengaluru, there isn’t even the fig leaf of the new name being in currency locally. Nobody knows Gurgaon as Gurugram.So what is the point of this change? The sooner the state government realises its folly and reverts to calling the city Gurgaon, the better.
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Goodbye, Gurgaon. Khattar government renames it Gurugram

Haryana government renames Gurgaon as ‘Gurugram’

GURGAON/CHANDIGARH: Gurgaon will now be called Gurugram. The corporate hub, home to some 250 Fortune 500 companies, is being renamed for its perceived epic roots, turning on its head the very concept of a Millennium City of the future.

The name change was announced in Chandigarh on Tuesday by the Manohar Lal Khattar government, which said it was keeping its poll promise. A government spokesperson said Guru Dronacharya, the guru of the Pandavas in the Mahabharata, had his ashram here. Officials in the chief minister’s office said the decision to rename Gurgaon was taken following representations from several forums.
The renaming, which is likely to take the sheen off Brand Gurgaon that became a symbol of pride for Corporate India over the past two decades, came in for sharp criticism on social media, with many questioning the rationale behind the move.

But a government spokesperson said, “Gurgaon was a great centre of learning, where the princes were educated. For long, the locals have been demanding that Gurgaon be renamed Gurugram.”

Changing Gurgaon’s name to Gurugram, however, does not follow the earlier pattern of renaming cities. When Calcutta became Kolkata, or Bombay Mumbai, or Madras Chennai and Bangalore Bengaluru, all that happened was cities shed their anglicised names and went back to the prevalent vernacular version. Bengalis, speaking in their language, anyway called Calcutta Kolkata. The same applied to Tamils speaking in their mother tongue, calling Madras Chennai. Gurgaon, however, was a vernacular name, and the renaming by the BJP government in Haryana seems an attempt to shine the light on a mythical past.