(Pic Courtesy: Rediff)

Our car has not moved for roughly 30 minutes and there is no sign it will in the next 30. The young driver at the wheel seems quite frustrated himself and jabs the horn intermittently, as if the sound would cause vehicles ahead to miraculously make way. His frustration adds to your own. Its past 8 pm and I’m already running late for a dinner appointment in central Bangalore.

Earlier, on emerging from the airport terminal building, for a moment, the weather actually felt like a Bangalore your correspondent once knew. Once we turned off the airport driveway and hit the main road going into the city one was reminded, once again, that this is not the same city. No way.

We are stuck, jammed solid. A mess like this in Bombay, no stranger to traffic jams, would qualify as a big one. At the end of it, as you finally reached the point where the problem appeared to originate, you would expect to find an overturned car with glass strewn all over, a burning bus or cops with bullet proof jackets turning over bodies after an `encounter' killing.

You want to gaze out and connect in some way with the inmates of neighbouring cars and riders on motorcycles, to see if their expressions betray a similar sense of being trapped or nonchalance, if this is like any other day. The dark sun-film which tourist cars in this part of the world have a tendency to slap on, effectively prevents that.

Iron Skeletons

You want to switch off the engine and air-conditioner, roll down the windows and take in some fresh Bangalore air. And then you think again, of the emissions from the idling vehicles around you. The good thing about Bombay is that vehicular pollution is terrible, but you know precisely how much. You desist from using the cellphone any more, saving the battery for some catastrophic moment.

This is not the first time one has been stuck on this stretch and surely will not be the last. The problem ought to be at the Indiranagar signal a kilometer or so ahead, an intersection which needed a flyover perhaps a decade ago. In February 2003, the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) thought as much and decided to build one.

It should have been completed in April 2004 but what stands there now, instead of a simple Rs 26 crore flyover, are a few concrete pillars and the iron skeletons of a few pillars. Its as if this part of the city suddenly saw a regime change causing the previous rulers to abandon and flee.

The Problem..& Solution

The story of the Indiranagar flyover is symptomatic of the problems and the solutions to Bangalore’s crumbling infrastructure. The problems are the same as any city, including Bombay. But the solutions, unlike Bombay, lie in its highly charged citizenry. If Bangalore is able to manage its infrastructure mess, it is the people who can take credit. Not many Indian cities or towns can claim that.

Why didn’t the flyover get completed on schedule ? Well, it’s a familiar tale. The BDA fought with the bridge contractor, the UP State Bridge Construction Company (UPSBCC), ostensibly for not honouring its time and project commitments. Then, unusually, the BDA terminated UPSBC’s contract. Not surprisingly, the contractor dragged the BDA to court.

Elsewhere, little would have happened. Not so in Bangalore. Recently, on June 7, some 250 students of the New Horizon English School staged a silent protest on the streets near Indiranagar. “We demand action,” said their simple banners. Their move did not shame any authorities into any action except, as subsequent events would show, make some conscientious High Court judge take note.

The Public Affairs Centre, headed by the mercurial Samuel Paul spearheaded this agitation. In true Bangalore-IT style, the call to arms was put up on the PAC website (www.pacindia.org). Apart from the 250 students, a fromer chief secretary, police commissioner, cricketer and an artist were involved. They also submitted a petition to the chief minister who in characteristic style must have promised `to look into it’. Blaming a court case for inaction is the easiest recourse for most, if not all, non-performing governments and politicians.

Didn’t Plan For A Jam

Co-incidentally, your correspondent got delayed by the protest as well, passing by on the way towards the Leela Palace Hotel for a Nasscom seminar that morning. While the first reaction was to curse the cause of the slowdown, watching the young and old people with black arm bands standing in silent protest, one felt consoled, even happy. At least one national news network was there, filming live.

Rajeeva Ratna Shah, member-secretary, Planning Commission, bound for the same venue, was caught too. On the way from the airport, he could have saved a good 20 minutes had he had alighted from his car and crossed the road to the Leela instead of going up to Indiranagar junction and U-turning it back. He did not and hundreds of India’s BPO czars, ranging from GE Capital and E-Serve to WNS and EXL, fidgeted till he arrived, more than half hour late for his keynote address at 9.30 am.

Nasscom chairman Kiran Karnik used the opportunity to make another case for better infrastructure in the city even as he apologized for Shah’s arrival. Shah himself talked of the Government’s support to Bangalore, but only in what seemed to be an afterthought after a rather long slide presentation where the key point was: a manpower shortage is around the corner for the ITES-BPO industry, 2.6 lakh less workers than the required 10 lakh workers by 2009; Nasscom subsequently refuted that.

If Shah had instead spoken off how the government could manage infrastructure, quickly, he would have had a far more grateful and attentive audience. The IT & ITES industry recognize the manpower shortage perhaps better than the government does and is working furiously to battle it; Nasscom and most large companies are working on training programmes, certification modules, talking to educational institutions and so on. But they can’t build flyovers, at least not yet.

The dapper Karnataka IT secretary Shankaralinge Gowda was late too, apparently he stopped to make peace with the protestors at Indiranagar junction. Gowda is not smug, quite unlike his present political bosses, and gives the impression of a man who is working to find a solution. Like all good bureaucrats, he’s armed with facts and figures and facing him in a debate is not a good idea unless you are too. But he too has been unable to get the flyover up.

Moving On..Slowly

There is some movement in the cars up ahead and my energetic driver whips the car to the left and squeezes it into a gap that just opened up. Another agonizing 15 minutes pass before we reach the end of Airport road and the beginning of MG road, now closer to Taj Westend, the destination for the evening. The traffic is no less fierce here but its moving.

Late last year, in a public debate, I asked Infosys CFO Mohandas Pai on whether the IT industry should invest in infrastructure since the government had obviously failed in doing so. The man lost his cool. “We (private sector) have generated employment and contribute so much to the city by way of revenue. It’s the government’s job to build the infrastructure. If we have to finance the infrastructure too, why do we need the government?.”

He may be right but being right is not the solution. The Indiranagar flyover is one of Bangalore’s many problems, the still, still-born International Airport at Devanahalli is yet another. As is the Mysore Expressway, all projects stuck for no apparent reason except that someone has not been kept happy.

In the same debate, both PAC's Samuel Paul and Nandi Infrastructure (the folks behind the Mysore Expressway) MD Ashok Kheny felt that the private sector should take charge. Kheny felt industry should wrest the task of development into its hands while PAC's Samuel felt the private sector needed to contribute more than just more income for cars for which there were no roads.

There is one example already. Right in Bangalore, the IT companies and the National Highway Authority have joined hands to build a Rs 450 crore flyover to Electronics City. Having realised complaining was a waste of time, the solution-oriented IT giants decided to put money down. Now to see whether and when this project sees the light of day.


The Court Steps In

For a poster city, things are not moving fast enough, note that every head of state visiting India includes Bangalore in his or her itinerary, even capital city Delhi seems an afterthought. Bangaloreans are proud and working hard to ensure things move but the Government seems particularly uncaring. Bangalore still can be rescued, unlike Bombay which is going the Calcutta way. Meanwhile, only the judiciary seems to offer some respite.

Two weeks after the citizen’s protest and the Nasscom forum, the Karnataka High Court rapped the BDA and held it responsible for the delay in completion in the Airport Road flyover. The Court also set aside the BDA order that had terminated the contract. Last week, perhaps the day that followed the Airport road jam, the BDA said work would resume and announced a new completion date: August 2006.

Lots of people and organisations are concerned and working for Bangalore. Here are some links: I particularly recommend the first two.

www.janaagraha.org
www.pacindia.org
www.bangalorebuzz.blogspot.com
www.karnataka.com/watch/infrastructure

PS: The previous post expressed architectural dismay over the collapse of the twin towers and the fact that it was not reinstated in that form, like one would over any felled monument, it was not a comment on terrorism or the fighting of it !

3 Comments

Deeps said…
Hey dude...Yup! i am on the same page rgding ur views about Bangalore...Being a Bangalorean, i really feel very bad when i see the chaos and poor state of Bangalore...
God knows whatz in store for Bangalore in the coming future!

BTW, I am one of the lot of admirers of your shows on CNBC...Keep going...Hope u bring out this poor state of Bangalore on one of your presentations in this channel!
Deep said…
It’s often seemed to me that Bangalore is possibly the only metro in the country where all is not lost again; the civic situation is still not so bad to be completely out of hand... but it is getting there fast. That, in spite of the fact that the city has been blessed with a number of public servants who, besides knowing their job are also concerned about the state of the health of the city. Not to say of the groups of concerned citizens. But though the push can come form them, the policy change has to be the government’s prerogative. During the previous government I remember seeing road-works being completed in a day – starting from the initial digging, to the fixing and the final patch up. Soon after the government changed, surprisingly, the same amount of work seemed to take weeks.
Priya said…
Am another one of those daily suffering journos in this godforsaken city. (Incidentally, am also, an ex-colleague of yours from ET Bangalore. Now, asst.editor of Global Custody Review, a sister mag of Capital Markets). It's a nightmare travelling,driving or even hailing an auto here in Bangalore. Not only is the infrastructure lousy, look at the public transport system. And who makes the most of the sad situation? The mercenery autowallahs.
First of all, even God wouldn't know what gets their butts moving. You ask them if they'll take you somewhere(distance not withstanding)...pat comes the nod of the head, if he's polite, others don't even bother to answer, just drive past like you didn't exist. At that moment, you feel like the most de-humanised being, who asked for a drop to some forbidden land! Not to mention, that the blood starts boiling after the 10th autowallah passes you by with the same nonchalant expression on his face. Anytime of the day, come rain, come shine "10/20 rupees extra madam!" Like just because it's the IT capital, everyone's a techie and a millionaire! It sucks big time. Complaint centres, letters to editors of various papers seem to be making little difference. And of course, the government can't be bothered.
So, where exactly is Bangalore headed? And why are people still swarming this city from all other parts of the world, like this is the only land of opportunities? Sad to say, the city wasn't built to tackle a techboom...it was meant to be a pensioner's paradise.
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