Part 2 — Infrastructure
Continuing from my last part, moving on to the parameter of infrastructure in Bengaluru.
We all are ranting against Bengaluru’s infrastructure and making lot of noise that roads are not proper, not able to handle the city traffic, waterlogging and blaming civic amenities, blaming metro, last mile connectivity etc.,
From my personal viewpoint I completely agree that Bengaluru has reached its peak and we are still actively exploiting it beyond what it can handle and its not going to be sustainable if we continue this way. Lets understand why we are in that position today.
Background (Context):
As I was mentioning in my previous part, Bangalore was not on the global map till I think early 2000s and it started to gain traction only after the software companies like InfoSys, Wipro, TCS, HP, Intel etc., started their operations here and I remember around 1999–2000 times the ITPL building was still considered so outside the city and the roads being empty.
All of a sudden in the next few years, as people across India got to know that Bangalore is the next tech hub and this is where the opportunity lies, lot of people from other states started coming here to Bangalore especially for studying engineering and then later got selected in the campus placements and beginning their professional life. I remember many of my school friends and juniors from Kanpur came here to study BE in BMSCE, RVCE, PESIT etc.,
This is where I would blame the then governments and the bureaucrats and the so called city planning officers for not showing leadership and lacking the vision to make Bangalore future proof. I remember the then CM S M Krishna doing something for Bangalore but as his tenure ended, all his initiatives were discontinued to quite an extent.
The biggest failure of the government was the lack of foresight and rapid execution in building good connectivity across the city and not focusing on infrastructure even after seeing that investments have started coming in. I think we lost literally 8-10 years in deciding whether we should get a monorail, a metro rail, an elevated rail transport system due to government apathy and lack of a stable government and administration
On the other hand, since businesses were coming into Bangalore and wanted to setup office spaces, the government started acquiring lands — left right and center (ignoring if its an agricultural land or not, near the lake or tank bund or going over the rajakaluves or storm water drain) and handing it over to builders and businesses and that’s where the death of Bengaluru as a city started.
The other factor responsible for todays disaster are the people (common man like you and me). We also have destroyed Bangalore for our greed, ego, status and so on. Earlier there was a saying in Kannada “Maduve maadi nodu, mane katti nodu” meaning “Trying getting someone married and try building a house”. This saying was to imply the hardships one used to face while marrying a daughter especially and if one was building a house because loans were not easily available, even salaries or the money people used to have were not insane and people used to put in their life savings.
But as Bangalore grew into an IT hub, people started going onsite via the H1B visas and suddenly the common man saw a status symbol in that. Parents of Infoscions, Wiproiites etc. wore a badge of superiority that my son/daughter is working in New Jersey/ California/Seattle and obviously since money started flowing in dollars and people saw an opportunity they started buying houses in Bangalore (be it localites or Non-Bangaloreans).
There is nothing wrong in buying a house and having a dream of owning a house and settling down in life. The problem starts when people became greedy and egoistic and start showing one upmanship to indicate they are more successful or wealthier than others. I remember hearing only few brand names in the real estate space like Brigade or Prestige or may be a couple more like Salarpuria, Purvankara mid-2000’s but all of a sudden in the past decade there have been innumerable builders and the worst part was nobody including corporates or bureaucrats or people buying the homes did any due diligence before buying the plot or site or apartment.
The fact that ORR which is the most dreaded or the areas surrounding Sarjapura which every now and then comes into the headlines was all considered not to be in Bangalore. The name itself says it all — We had so many villages — Halli in Kannada means village. So probably now you can connect the dots if you had not known it earlier. There is Kadubeesanahalli, Devarabeesanahalli, Marathahalli, Kaikondrahalli, Kasavanahalli. All these were small villages and were obviously not designed to take the load of tens of thousands of people and so many corporate buildings, PGs, flats, pubs and bars per square kilometre. Everything has a breaking point and we have reached that stage now.
The moment a builder advertises a lake view apartment and quotes 3 Cr/4 Cr, people are still going ahead and buying it. So you should know that if it rains and pours like hell, you will definitely have problems. If you have common sense (btw which is not so common as they say), you will know that water flows downstream and doesn’t go upstream naturally unless pumped. Then if water enters your flats or homes please don’t blame the BBMP or BWSSB.
If you as a home owner stop buying flats or apartments or even plots near to the lake bed/tank/pond and reduce the demand, the builders would have to think of other options. But we want to show off that corporate title right — am VP, am SVP, am a Sr manager, am a Director and do the gossip over cigarette and tea breaks. “Arre yaar, voh director hoke 2 ghar leliya bey, Main Sr Director hoke saala 1 hi ghar liya hoon”. Let me switch jobs and buy a villa near Sarjapur/Electronics City/Whitefield.
This is what all of us have done over the past 10–15 years. so don’t blame Bangalore the next time you are having an itching too. The same is the problem with other major cities-Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata, Noida etc etc., All are birds of the same feather flocking together except there will be some slight variations. If some state has law and order problem, some has smoke, pollution and traffic problem, some have both and all of us are collectively responsible.
For all the non-Bangaloreans, who are blaming Bangalore, just give a logical thinking to it — What would happen to your city/town if suddenly or very rapidly half of India starts coming in to your city for whatever reason — be it education, work, business, tourism and starts staying there. Or if you want a more simple analogy, consider your house/home — instead of 4 of you living, 20 of your relatives start living in your house within a span of 1 month and you had no option of saying “No” to them and then they start complaining: Iske ghar mein towel sukhaane ki jagah nahi hai, toilet baas marta hain, subaah time pe chai nahi milta hain etc., what will be your reaction? Hope you got the point :) and an idea about why the infrastructure is like this today.
Vroom..Vroom.. Here comes traffic!!
