All is well, but oh, the Bangalore roads: Maran

NEW DELHI: Poor roads and traffic congestion are the only matters which plague Bangalore, according to Dayanidhi Maran, Union minister for communication and information technology.

In his reply to a special mention by Rajya Sabha member B K Hariprasad, Maran said Bangalore had plenty of IT infrastructure in terms of power, telecom connectivity, water and state-of-the-art IT parks, but road connectivity was a concern.

Bangalore has 23 lakh vehicles with about 750 new ones added daily to the already choked roads.

The IT industry and the State government have been at loggerheads over infrastructure facilities in the State.

The Bangalore Chamber of Industry and Commerce had even threatened to boycott the State's premier IT event, BangaloreIT.in in protest against the inadequate infrastructure in the city. The recent rains had further exposed the fragile infrastructure of Bangalore.

Maran said that the State authorities are taking action to broaden and resurface roads wherever possible. Long-term projects such as construction of road over bridges, flyovers and grade separators were in the pipeline.

Projects like the Bangalore International Airport, Bangalore Metro, Hi-tech city, Hardware Technology Park, the elevated four-lane expressway connecting the Electronics City-Peripheral ring road, and the Cauvery fourth state second-phase work to increase water supply by over 500 million litres a day would be in operation in the next 2-3 years' time.

Bangalore city had seen phenomenal growth of IT companies during the last 7-8 years. There were 680 IT companies in 1998 and the number had increased to 1,584 now, of which 622 were MNCs contributing to almost 25 per cent of the GDP of the state.

The minister said that the total export from Karnataka for 2004-05 was worth Rs 27,600 crore accounting for one third of the total IT exports from the country.

The IT sector had provided direct employment to 300,000 and indirect employment to over 10,00,000 people. The pay bill of these companies was over Rs 10,000 crore and the city was the fastest growing in Asia with a population of 65 lakh and a floating population of 15 lakh.