Bengaluru’s civic woes – The Hindu

Over the last month, residents of Bengaluru have witnessed the Karnataka government waking up to some age-old problems such as encroached footpaths, garbage blackspots, footpath riding and the like.

Spearheaded by the new Greater Bengaluru Development Minister, Krishna Byre Gowda, back-to-back drives since July 1 saw civic authorities attempt to reclaim the city’s notoriously bad pedestrian infrastructure from encroachments by commercial establishments, street vendors, abandoned vehicles, and garbage dumps — problems that most residents had simply resigned to live with.

Though citizens have welcomed the drives, street vendors argue that they were never given vending zones. Moreover, garbage dumping and blackspots exist mostly due to inefficient waste collection as well as civic apathy. In some cases, dumping is carried out by the civic workers themselves due to the lack of waste transfer stations.

The drive to clear footpaths in the city led to altercations between street vendors and civic authorities; in one such clearance drive in Shivajinagar, miscreants even attacked the officials carrying out the drive. Citizens also reported that several of the encroachments that were cleared were back to how they were days after the clearance drive.

The Minister maintained that the aim was not to displace anyone but to create safe pedestrian infrastructure at least on the arterial roads; he said that vendors could move to the inner roads to continue business. However, street vendor unions have questioned this logic, pointing to the lack of will by successive governments to streamline street vending by assigning ID cards and notifying vending zones, so as to prevent harassment from anti-social elements and enforcement agencies. Mr. Gowda later directed corporation officials to conduct a fresh survey of street vendors as the previous survey had enumerated only a little over 30,000 street vendors, while the actual number exceeds 80,000. He also instructed them to identify vending zones.

In the case of abandoned vehicles, the Minister clarified that the campaign is not aimed at vehicles in regular use, admitting that parking regulations requiring houses to have dedicated parking spaces had not been enforced for decades, resulting in residents having to park their vehicles on public roads.

Lack of planning

Urban planning experts and residents have repeatedly pointed to one lacuna when it comes to Bengaluru: the lack of a long-term vision that can keep pace with the level of growth the city experiences. This, they have argued, applies to many areas, from planning the Namma Metro network, that is yet to reach the Kempegowda International Airport, to ensuring connectivity to Bengaluru’s rapidly expanding boundaries.

To address what is easily the city’s best claim to infamy, its traffic, the Congress Government has pushed for new tunnel roads and flyovers. However, urban experts and citizens’ groups have continuously argued against them, reasoning that the city’s public transport should be strengthened instead of introducing short-term solutions for the growing number of private vehicles.

Another case in point is the city’s way of addressing its water needs. As Bengaluru’s once famed network of lakes has been undermined by infrastructure projects, the government is focussed on bringing solutions from afar. Every drought-hit year threatens the Cauvery dependent-city’s water security.

The State government, under the leadership of the new Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar, is pushing aggressively for the positioning of Bengaluru as a prime investment destination. As Bengaluru continues to function without an elected civic council since 2020, with the State government facing pressure from the Supreme Court to conduct elections this year, the emphasis on mega projects such as tunnel roads is being seen as an attempt to tilt the odds towards the Congress.

But since there is no assurance on when these big-ticket projects would be realised, the slew of new drives to fix basic pedestrian problems are the ones that could provide instant relief to citizens. There is a growing call for the government to improve the quality of life of the citizens by first fixing the basics before moving on to big-ticket projects.

deepika.kc@thehindu.co.in