Glass, glaze, glitz do not make a city global

Priya Padmanabhan






BANGALORE: Flared tempers and frazzled nerves are part and parcel of almost every Bangalorean's work commute. What more proof than the "Jambuster" updates on the local FM station and RJs who tell commuters to relax and listen to music while waiting for the slow, snaking line of vehicles inching their way forward. 





Traffic gridlock is just one of the fall-outs of the city which hasn't quite been able to keep in step with the tremendous transformation of its business landscape. Today, the vehicle population in Bangalore is 23 lakh. Compare this to around nine lakh vehicles a decade back. 





Here's another interesting statistic: two out of every ten Bangaloreans today owns a car. The number of vehicles on the road is expected to vroom to 37 lakh by 2010. Today the car population is at 10.8 per cent growth, more than the growth of people added in the city (3.28 per cent). Around 41 per cent of Bangalore's population depends on the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) buses. While the future holds the promise of a Metro Rail system, some experts say that the planned Metro network does not seem to fit in well into the overall transport plan. It is a different story that the city lacks an integrated transportation plan. 





The population in the city now hovers around 70 lakh and is expected to touch the one crore mark in 2021. The city is home to 1500 IT and BPO companies, employing around 200,000 people. The parallel service economy that includes housekeeping, security, catering industry makes up for another lakh. 





While IT biggies in Bangalore boast of self-contained, state-of-the-art campuses and facilities, the reality on the roads is something totally different. During the monsoons last year, techies who are usually safely ensconced in their uber-hi-tech facilities got a reality check when offices and even apartments in low-lying areas suffered from the deluge that followed. 





A simple fact stares in the face of all city residents: the sleepy little town that is now a throbbing IT metropolis has not seen planned growth. The city's growth rate now stands at seven per cent, which is the highest in Asia. The unbridled urban sprawl in Bangalore could lead to a massive resource crunch. The increased demand for water, power and land are evident. 





Swati Ramanathan, founder of Janaagraha, an NGO that advocates citizens' participation for better governance, says that the problem lies in the lack of integration between all the civic agencies including BMTC, the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA), the Municipal Corporation and others. 





"Most of the development works that are on in the city are just band-aid solutions. No one is thinking long-term and planning for massive growth in future." According to sources, the city witnesses a floating population of 15 lakh people every day. 





The city grew much beyond the symbolic four towers representing Bangalore's limits, erected by the city's founder Kempe Gowda, around a decade ago. Today the sprawl is unabated and runs across all directions. Around 6,295 acres of farmland in the five taluks of Bangalore have been converted since April 2004. The sliver of greenbelt (around 742 sq km) surrounding the city has been reducing over the years due to encroachment. The area in the belt has reduced by 4.28 per cent in the last ten years. 





The Bangalore Development Authority, which has drafted a master plan that envisions the city's growth from 2005 to 2015, plans to reduce the green belt in the comprehensive development plan (CDP) by 2015 to 221 sq km from 742 sq km. 





Given the almost insatiable growth pressure in the hi-tech hub, BDA estimates that an additional 300 km would be required for urban growth, which would bring the total urbanized area to 812 sq km. 





While land allotments for IT businesses and other industries and housing are increasing, not much thought has been given to housing the working class and small traders who provide employment to the majority of the city's population. There is a feeling that while the IT industry is pampered with subsides, concessions and infrastructure benefits, the other "shadow" sector is conveniently ignored by the system. 





A public forum on the CDP, which was held last year, brought in myriad viewpoints from citizens. One of them pointed out that the “informal sector” consisting of pushcart vendors, pavement sellers and poorer sections of the society have been sidelined in the Plan. “There is emphasis on IT but nothing for them,” she alleged.





There seems to be an inequitable investment into infrastructure works across the city, which is more in favor of the "IT corridor". Ramanathan points out that while a lot of hype and planning has gone into the new airport at Devanahalli, which falls outside the radius of Bangalore city, not much thought has gone into housing of service staff and the planning landscape there after. 





The infrastructure issue has cropped up in the IT industry quite frequently in the last three years. The industry had also threatened to boycott the state's showcase IT event BangaloreIT.in in the last two years. Persuasion and promises from the Government's side eventually reversed the IT companies' decision. The measures taken by the government -- be it to build flyovers, roads or ease traffic have been reactive steps than following a full-fledged plan. 





Ramanathan thinks that reforms are needed to alter the current scenario. She thinks that IT captains are in a unique position to make things better. "What the industry majors are doing now is asking for solutions that can fix their problems. But they can do a lot more by influencing reforms rather than asking for quick fixes.” 





It is clear that well-heeled IT professionals and IT companies have built their own fortresses, which are fairly insulated from problems since they have invested in amenities such as independent power generation, providing transport to their employees and adequate security. They have in some ways, brought down the dependency on the government. 





However, this is not true for most Bangaloreans - the ones who are hurt the most due to government inefficiency and inadequate amenities. The divide between these two Bangalores has to be bridged soon enough before it becomes an unmanageable chasm. 





As Swati Ramanathan observed, "A sea of glass and glaze does not make a city international." 





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