Chalo Neo Bangalore: Relocating disastrous urban development

Step aside, Navi Mumbai. Here comes Neo Bangalore. This morning’s Times Property supplement breathlessly hypes a new “planned township” with “great ambiance, good infrastructure, and fantastic connectivity” in nearby Hoskote. “At Neo Bangalore, it would be exactly like living in old Bangalore with swanky new facilities,” promises the advertorial, citing a variety of anonymous—and most likely imaginary—sources:

“People are nostalgic about Old Bangalore but they definitely want the buzz of the new. A satellite town like Neo Bangalore will combine the two elements, making it a winsome solution,” says an old Bangalorean who is quite fed up of the traffic and mushrooming commercial establishments in his once-upon-a-time quiet neighbourhood.

The solution to disastrous urban planning: more of the same. Having gutted the city, its trees and neighbourhoods, clogged its streets with traffic and trash, city developers are now planning to repeat the feat in a new location. Kinda like the way the aam aadmi starts a new pile of rubbish on the roadside when the first heap grows too large.[caption id=“attachment_687567” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Clogged Bangalore. AFP[/caption] All this ‘paid news’ hoo-ha about neo Bangalore is all the more ironic given the front-page headline which reads: “It’s a low quality of life in Bangalore, survey finds.” As the article notes, Bangalore has been ranked ninth in a 11-city quality of life survey conducted by the NGO Janaagraha, which rated the cities along parameters such as transportation systems, cleanliness, water, public amenities, crime, and pollution control.

After Kanpur, Delhi and Jaipur, Bangalore had the highest crime ranking. The IT City was ranked No. 10 for availability of water and adequate mobility system. The garden city was ranked eighth in greenery and pollution control and No. 9 in cleanliness. Ahmedabad was the best in public amenities, while Bangalore was at No 9. One of the fastest growing cities in India, Bangalore had the lowest score in urban capacities and resources.

The truth is that all Bangaloreans, old and new, no longer can afford the luxury of reminiscing about sleepy, verdant towns of yore. We are way past nostalgic and deep into the territory of outright panic. Everyone knows there is something terribly awry in our city – and it’s not merely the loss of the old. What is striking about the Janaagraha survey—which did its own audit of each city, and polled its residents—is the abysmally low opinion of Bangalore’s residents of their city. For example, where Janaagraha rates Bangalore at 3.0 in urban planning and design, Bangaloreans give it a rock-bottom 9. Bangalore scores a 5 in Janaagraha’s assessment of transparency and political accountability and citizen participation, we rated it again at a low 9. The discrepancy underlines the current mood of angry despair which recently found expression in the urban local body elections where the ruling BJP government was trounced even in its saffron strongholds. But as the Economic Times points out, the underlying reasons for this state of civic disarray in our big cities lie closer to home:

Cities do not have a ‘metropolitan planning committee’, a lapse that is hard to explain at a time when the urban sprawl is India’s most striking feature. Civic councils lack money; they have weak mayors and councils, with no real authority to bring about any change in civic affairs. In contrast to global best practices, city corporations across India do not have adequate trained manpower, or a framework of systems and processes for urban governance. Worse, city-dwellers, who bear the brunt of this mismanagement, have no opportunity to participate in local government.

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Unlike the great cities of the world, local governance in our big metros is extremely weak. Bangalore’s local bodies fare especially poorly in this matter: The city’s civic agencies have very little access to and control over finances and human resources: “They have to get the state government’s approval even for the annual budget and have absolutely no borrowing powers,” notes TOI. Hence, Bangalore’s fortunes are far more affected by the political disarray at the top than a city with stronger local institutions. Kicking out the ruling state party may offer satisfaction, but it is at best a temporary and ineffective fix. Our nation is in the midst of a historic rural migration, as millions of Indians move from village to city. Our cities require strong and responsive local governance and active citizen participation to manage this human tsunami. We can no longer leave the fate of our hometowns to the whims of politicians and developers. Azim Premji urged Bangaloreans to take to the streets to protest the garbage crisis: “I think their has to be a movement, I think you agitate, it is ruining your health, your parents health and your children’s health.” The likes of Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Narayana Murthy and Mohandas Pai have since formed a political action committee to elect responsive candidates to local bodies. “It is ridiculous for us to believe that the problems of our society will be solved by someone else,” says urban development expert Ashwin Mahesh. And they certainly won’t be solved by moving to a Neo version of Bangalore.