Its the Silicon valley of India – Bangalore. Silicon valley, generally is flush with planning of major things, but our poor Bangalore is flush with NO planning
Before my city was christened Silicon valley, it was adoringly called the Pensioners paradise. The ever cool weather, lethargic atmosphere, always adjust maadi culture perfectly matched the needs of a person who wanted to relax after having toiled all their life. However, the IT and the following ITES boom or bubble, has taken the wind out of this paradise and now the winds of change has left Bangalore gasping for breath. The gasp is seriously getting too strained and its sure to cause a burst of the wind pipe
Our city fathers who are entrusted with the task of planning for this city has actually been busy with what i am not sure. The Corporator’s are still to be elected by the city dwellers and the Govt of Karnataka is yet to get this election happen. An order by the High Court is also not enough as is evident
Lakes
Bangalore once was a land mass which had huge number of lakes, these lakes i am sure helped in containing the temperature rise, collected all rain water, helped to ensure that the water table beneath is not depleted above all i guess the most important aspect is that flooding was kept in control because all water flowed into these natural reservoirs. Man however, realised the importance of what is land and land could only come up by filling these water bodies so the greedy men filled the lakes up to build mighty buildings that are now causing all natures fury of Heat & Flood !!! The city’s polity has only become richer by these builders and they are crying hoarse when small kids are getting washed away in these snap floods.
I stay near Mahadevpura and i have been witnessing the death of Narayanpura kere [ kere – lake in Kannada ], Mahadevpura Kere…. these both huge lakes have gone beneath the mud filling to make Ring Roads and now buildings'. The Mahadevpura lake still has some part of it left but hardly water fills in there and soon another building of a huge construction is to form up there
Roads
We all know that Roads are a most important aspect to connect areas and people who stay there. Roads are also a cause for Growth… be it traffic or Inhabitations. When roads are built they need to consider this growth, however if you ride, drive or walk across Bangalore roads, you will see that these roads are all choked because the people who planned it never thought that these black surfaces would bring with them such massive burst
The Outer Ring Road was planned in early 80’s and was to have been completed by late 80’s. However it saw completion only a decade later than what was planned. This road is supposed to be a continuous connector, but at most places it breaks continuity and becomes narrow stretches. This is because the makers didn't bother to acquire the required space. The City has now concentrated around the stretches of this ORR and interestingly most commercial places in Bangalore are turning out to be the Ring Rd surroundings. With this spurt of commercialisation and Residential activity the traffic that the RR carries is high. That the RR would have helped with faster movement of traffic has been dealt a blow with numerous traffic signal stops necessitated by the ever growing intersections. Had the planners thought about these and had constructed some interchanges then, all this could have been avoided. Interchanges is something that ceases on all our roads
Other than the RR, most of the other roads are built as narrow stretches with hardly a concern for drivers, these are not even lit properly, No medians, Side drains not covered. No road is complete without Asphalting. Roads in Bangalore get the most shabby quality of Asphalt again thanks to the no care attitude of the rulers who are tied in with the Contractors.
BCC to BMP to BBMP
The City Corporation was once called Bangalore City Corporation. Due to the language sensitivity it was christened as Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike. After a long haul, more areas were added to this corporation to make it Bruhat [ Greater ]… so now we have BBMP. By becoming bruhat, the problems have also become bruhat. The erstwhile Municipal Corporations [CMC] were en-masse added in without any proper planning or even proper thought. BBMP still runs in the old BMP areas and the newly added areas are now left with not knowing who to go for what. However, one thing that ensured swiftly was the BBMP started collecting taxes as per the BMP norms from the newly added areas. Of-course rulers need money and that should be collected or snatched from people BUT as always services for the citizens can wait
When we were with CMC, there used to be some drain cleaning, water used to be supplied from the Bore wells, street lights were regularly repaired or replace and above all taxation was at the lesser rate. None of these now happen which would make the citizen think they are now in a Corporation area – which for most of them was a dream come true.
All in all there seems to be no time spend for planning… its all farce tip of the finger stupid solutions which does not even last the initial few months ! As a citizen of this dying metropolis, i just wonder when will the government agencies do some planning
