City on the Edge

CITY ON THE EDGE
Flash rains and Bangalore comes to a halt. A collapsed city or one on the verge of collapsing? BT asks experts

The Times of India

Samuel Paul, chairman , Public Affairs Centre

The city’s infrastructure is on the verge of collapsing. It does not seem able to cope with the problems it faces. If a pothole is filled one day, the tar gets washed away in one rain the next day. There seems to be a combination of reasons for this sorry state of affairs: administrators are inherently incapable of fulfilling their task; a lack of commitment from our city managers; and rampant corruption. When a public commitment has been made and it doesn’t get fulfilled, that’s a sign of a collapsing administration. I feel if there is no competency among our people, we should look for able administrators from outside the city.

Leo Saldanha, founder, Environment Support Group


I wouldn’t call it a collapse of the city’s infrastructure, but a total and gross collapse of the management of the city. The core reason for this is the fact that its administration is highly centralised. No city of this size can be managed that way. There has been contempt for local involvement, and the administration is paying for that now. We have ward committees that are not functioning the way they should. We have come to a state where parents are scared of their children being electrocuted while playing. What kind of a city is this? Nobody understands a ward better than the people who live there. People should be allowed to take part in local governance, like they did in the pre-Independence days.

Kalpana Kar, former BATF member

Our infrastructure is on the verge of collapse. The problems of a fast increasing population have been creeping up on us; we have been analysing the situation but not reacting to it. Just like a city cannot be built in a day, it cannot also be destroyed overnight. The telling signs (of an infrastructure having collapsed) is that a drive that took 15 minutes now takes an hour. We are forever on a fault-finding, postmortem mission but do not want to prescribe solutions to problems. There is lack of coordination and clarity in the minds of those who are in decisionmaking. Above all, the government alone cannot do it. This is the age for partnerships and shared responsibility. We have to look at solutions holistically and not piecemeal. We must also identify our destination; whether we want to be Shanghai, Singapore or Bangalore 30 years ago.

Bob Hoekstra, corporate head


We cannot take the flooding by flash rains as an indication for a collapsed city. That happens in cities around the world. But yes, the city’s infrastructure has partially collapsed. The rate at which the traffic here is growing is far greater than the pace at which infrastructure is being built. The collapse will continue till the infrastructurebuilding exercise catches up with the growth of the city. The sure signs of the collapse are everywhere — nothing is moving; projects are not progressing; whatever work takes place happens at a tardy pace. The root cause of it is that the gove r n m e n t lacks the conviction or willpower to carry out any work. There also does not seem to be any rigorous checking of the progress of projects they announce. I feel the situation can change if the agencies who are responsible for various developmental work are empowered more. The government should also ensure that bureaucratic delays are cut down and coordination between the different agencies is improved.