In Sector 85, one of Gurugram’s burgeoning sectors, Hans Kumar’s real estate agency, Masters Realty, is easy to find. Located next to a petrol bunk — appropriate, because land and gas drive everything in this part of the National Capital Region — Kumar, 44, advertises himself as someone who sells property in “Gurgaon and Goa”. His largest deals run into crores in Gurugram, with one transaction amounting to ₹60 crore last year.
In Goa, he has only been able to crack the ₹3-₹5 crore ‘market’. “In Gurugram, I know every single thing about the land, because I am from a farming family,” says Kumar, who is from Janola gaon (village), near Pataudi town, one of the four sub-divisions of Gurugram district. He has been in real estate for 18 years, having started right after high school.
His dream, though, is to move to Goa. Hans Kumar of Masters Realty in Gurugram. | Photo Credit: Sunalini Mathew “I won’t be able to buy something on the beach, but I want a clean, peaceful life.
It’s just a matter of convincing my wife,” says Kumar. Goa’s only drawback: “ Wahan pe acchi chai nahi milti [You don’t get good tea there].” Besides land, and the money he can make off it, he sees nothing in Haryana except dust.
Across Delhi-NCR, from Defence Colony’s drawing rooms to Haryana’s hinterland, Goa is now a haven from the pollution of India’s capital. Increasingly though, the agrarian state is seen as an ‘investment’, because as much as Delhi-ites .
