Bengaluru: With India’s IT capital, which aspires to be a global city, grappling with crumbling infrastructure and lack of basic amenities, the Karnataka government has proposed to set up a special cell to oversee filling of identified potholes in Bengaluru city.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Deputy CM, D.K. Shivakumar Wednesday embarked on rounds of the city to take stock of monsoon preparedness to avoid a repeat of the 2022 floods that brought the city to a grinding halt.
Although rains last week brought some relief from the ongoing water scarcity, the showers exposed the fault lines in the city’s infrastructure that has failed to keep pace with unchecked and unplanned growth.
Siddaramaiah said that he has instructed officials to find a “permanent solution” to the pothole problem. “In order to maintain roads and also fill up potholes as soon as they occur, I have made a special cell,” he told reporters Wednesday in Bengaluru. He added that he has instructed officials to fill all potholes and clear encroachments on ‘Rajakaluves’ or storm water drains (SWD) before the onset of the monsoon.
Karnataka, particularly Bengaluru, attracts one of the highest inflows of foreign direct investments (FDI) in the country and is counted among the world’s biggest global hubs for startups, aerospace and IT services, among other sectors, but ground realities paint a very different picture.
The floods in 2022 inundated most parts of Bengaluru with water destroying homes and livelihoods in the outer localities of the city, especially around the IT corridors in Mahadevapura and Bommanahalli.
Urban centres in India face similar challenges of rapid urbanisation and rampant corruption within their respective civic bodies that has led to a decline in quality of life for people who migrate to or live in these cities in search of better employment and educational opportunities.
Civic activists termed Siddaramaiah’s stock-taking exercise more “symbolic” than a “sustainable” way to address persisting issues.
“As long as you do not have a city council or a Mayor, how much can a CM and Dy CM do? They are trying to lead the entire state of Karnataka and Bengaluru is just one city. It is more symbolic and it’s good and useful as it moves the entire machinery but it’s not sustainable and becomes more symbolic rather than a systemic, fundamental change in the way things are done” Srinivas Alavilli, a Bengaluru-based civic activist, told ThePrint.
The term of municipal councillors ended in September 2020 and there has been no effort to hold elections for the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) since.
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‘Bengaluru has 6,000 potholes’
Bengaluru has many monikers. Among them is ‘startup & aviation hub’ , ‘knowledge capital’ but its nearly 14 million residents are forced to endure civic apathy and crumbling infrastructure almost every single day.
Siddaramaiah said that according to a ‘census’ conducted by the government, there are just over 6,000 potholes in the city (5,500 in ward roads and 557 in arterial/sub-arterial roads).
Though there is no dearth in budgets or even expenditures, successive governments have blamed each other for the pitiful condition.
The previous Basavaraj Bommai-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Karnataka, in 2022, had admitted that the state and municipal corporation spent over Rs 20,000 crore on road-related works in Bengaluru alone in the five years before 2021.
Karnataka accounted for 22 percent (Approximately $4 billion) of the nearly $ 18 billion FDI inflows into the country in FY 2023-24. Against that number, the amount spent on fixing roads in Bengaluru over a five-year period was just under $3 billion.
Most roads in Bengaluru are in poor condition or perpetually ‘under construction’ as the administration goes in for ‘white topping’ — replacing an existing asphalt pavement with a layer of concrete.
“The reason for the floods is the lack of investment in infrastructure and the encroachment of natural valleys and lakes. We need to prevent those encroachments but we have to invest a lot more in terms of drainage systems to the high intensity storms we are likely to get because of the urban heat island effect and global warming” Vishwanath. S, an urban planner and water conservation researcher, had told ThePrint earlier.
The urban heat island effect refers to the replacement of natural land cover with dense concentration of pavements, buildings, higher energy consumption like usage of air conditioners among other factors.
According to a study by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru had 68 percent green cover in the 1970s and paved surfaces accounted for just 8 percent. However, by 2023 paved surfaces accounted for 86 percent while green cover accounted for a mere 3-4 percent.
With natural valleys, lakes and canals encroached for construction of homes and large office spaces, there is no space for excess rain water to flow, resulting in floods.
Civic activists say that the rainwater drain network is encroached, largely due to corruption in the municipal corporation, enabling the creation of high-rise apartments, luxury villa projects and other settlements which then get flooded during heavy downpour.
In addition, the state government has sought an additional Rs 2,000 crore from World Bank to complete civic works related to stormwater drains.
Siddaramaiah said that of the 860 km of stormwater drains in the city, nearly 174 km are yet to be completed or cleared of encroachments.
‘Not serious about holding BBMP polls’
The Congress government in Karnataka is yet to take a decision on holding the BBMP elections and has often cited legal entanglements as a reason.
On Wednesday, Siddaramaiah said delay in holding municipal elections was due to restrictions on account of the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.
“Once the model code of conduct (is lifted) we will think about it,” Siddaramaiah said.
But activists point to a bigger problem — lack of municipal staff.
“Bengaluru has a problem of capacity,” Alivalli said, referring to civic advisory group Janaagraha’s study on the number of civic workers per 100,000 population. According to the study, Bengaluru has 317 municipal staff per lakh population as against 486 in Hyderabad, 938 in Mumbai and 5,906 in New York.
He added that since each ward in the city is a small city within itself, a single engineer cannot be tasked with handling all issues emanating from them.
But Alivalli says holding the BBMP elections will enable more accountability with residents not having to reach out to the state government for any problems.
Former councilors, regardless of party affiliation, say they are being denied elections as MLAs and MPs want to control all city affairs and funds. “No government, irrespective of party, is serious about holding (civic) elections. MLAs and MPs do not want to cede control of tender allocation for public works,” a former BJP councilor told ThePrint, requesting anonymity.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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