Bangalore Crumbling Part 2

BANGALORE CRUMBLING
A series on the rot: what, why, how & who, part-II
Govt’s well thought-out plan: Get the best, brightest to deliver, then humiliate them

The Indian Express

Bangalore’s unique urban task force, headed by Infosys CEO Nandan Nilekani, had started transforming the city. Other cities are looking at it as a model but here he’s mocked—and the A team firmly sidelined


Bangalore Crumbling BANGALORE, DECEMBER 5: ‘‘Why is everyone talking of bad roads? What were the IT leaders doing in the last five years? One of them was heading the Bangalore Agenda Task Force (BATF). Why did he not get the roads repaired?’’

The harangue couldn’t be stranger. Launching the diatribe is H D Revanna, Karnataka’s Public Works Minister and the man responsible for the city’s roads. His target: Nandan Nilekani, CEO of tech giant Infosys, and a tax-paying user of the roads.

Revanna’s father, former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda—who insists his party’s previous government did the most for Bangalore in the late 1990s—is equally scathing.

‘‘Now these ungrateful people are complaining of the coalition’s indifference towards IT (infotech) and demanding Central rule for Bangalore,’’ he says, the scorn barely concealed.

The rants against IT and Nilekani are the latest and the first public assaults on a unique public-private partnership, which had not only begun to transform Bangalore but was a harbinger on how urban governments could get top private expertise to help govern cities.

A bemused Nilekani reacted carefully to the outburst from Revanna, whose Janata Dal (Secular), the coalition partner of the Congress, shows little interest in Bangalore’s dangerous downslide.

‘‘It’s very clear that Bangalore was transforming itself,’’ Nilekani tells The Indian Express. ‘‘It’s also very clear that since February, there has been a dramatic decline in the governance of the city.’’

Venkatraman Ravichander, a BATF member who runs his own consulting firm, put it succinctly: ‘‘The BATF is in a comatose condition.’’

Why has the BATF and Nilekani—who put in about Rs 5 crore of his money to re-engineer the municipal corporation’s accounting system, to hire urban planners—been sidelined?

They were set up by the man Deve Gowda hates, former chief minister S M Krishna, who vowed to make Bangalore another Singapore.

‘‘His downfall was concurrent with our demise,’’ confessed another member of the BATF requesting anonymity. ‘‘If we get this model to work even now, Krishna will get the credit, and that’s the core of the problem.’’

It may seem particularly vindictive, destructive behaviour, but many bureaucrats moved into prominent positions by the Chief Minister and Deve Gowda simply ignore the BATF now.

Dharam Singh insists nothing has changed. ‘‘I have given them (BATF) full powers,’’ he says. ‘‘Who is stopping them from meeting?’’

‘‘The BATF was not designed to be a debating society,’’ says Nilekani. ‘‘It needs active decision-making and support from the government, service providers must become answerable.’’

Two Dharam Singh meetings with Nilekani and the BATF led to only handshakes and photo-ops: since then the chief minister has not bothered to even reply to two letters Nilekani sent him.

‘‘We’ve had good dosa with Dharam Singh, nothing else,’’ another BATF member said caustically. ‘‘Tomorrow, if he says come and slog, I will. But the heart of the model is that the political leadership of the day gives the mandate, and the administration takes its cues from there. We have no mandate, the administration no longer cares.’’

The BATF’s last proper meeting was in January. These half-yearly ‘‘summits’’ were normally day-long affairs—often attended by the chief minister—where the city’s works were evaluated, new targets fixed and plans made.

‘‘There was nowhere to hide,’’ recalled a bureaucrat who attended the meetings. ‘‘The Bangalore City Corporation, the Bangalore Development Authority—they all knew what they had to do and that they would be answerable if they did not.’’

The BATF members took no money for their work, so the city got professional help for free and Bangalore’s best minds knew they were indeed making a difference, a classic win-win situation.

As Nilekani noted, Bangalore is now competing for investment with cities like Singapore, Shanghai and Kuala Lumpur. Now if only Dharam Singh and his government realised that.

Grounding model that worked

• The Bangalore Agenda Task Force was set up in 1998 with the mandate: make Bangalore a Singapore. The best private-sector minds worked with bureaucrats, revamping tax collection, public toilets, garbage pickup & more
• The BATF devised and launched a property tax self-assessment scheme, which other cities now want to adopt. In two years from 2000, the municipal corporation’s tax revenue doubled to Rs 200 crore

• BATF chief Nandan Nilekani even put in Rs 5 crore of his own money, half to revamp the corporation’s accounting system and half to employ urban planners and provide office infrastructure

Why is everyone talking of bad roads? What were the IT leaders doing in the last five years? One of them was heading the BATF. Why did he not get the roads repaired?’’
H D Revanna, Public Works
Minister, Karnataka

‘‘Now these ungrateful people are complaining of the coalition’s indifference towards IT and demanding Central rule for Bangalore’’
H D Deve Gowda, former PM & JD(S) supremo

‘‘It’s very clear that Bangalore was transforming itself. It’s also very clear that since February, there has been a dramatic decline in the governance of the city’’
Nandan Nilekani, CEO, Infosys & BATF head