Not quite a Silicon Valley!

Not quite a Silicon Valley!
What was once known as India’s IT/BPO capital has now become a byword for the collapse of basic civic facilities each time there is a downpour! Bangalore is today a city in extremis
The Economic Times


AFEW Saturdays ago, a 30-minute downpour knocked out Bangalore. The roads were inundated, the traffic tied into knots, the houses dark and lifeless as the power lines had snapped, courtesy falling tree-branches. It took a few days for the entire city to recover in toto. The more powerful areas -- those better serviced by way of both political and electric-power connections -- recovered much faster than those where the far less powerful existed. And I remembered a journalistic trip to the US of A and seeing a report of a twominute breakdown in electric power making Page One news in Austin where we stayed for a few days in the last week of August 1995. Austin is the capital of the state of Texas which has given the USA its 43rd president in the form of George W Bush. Austin is also known -- so a pretty waitress informed me over dinner in the restaurant of the hotel where I was staying -- for its association with short-story writer O Henry who perfected his art while serving out a sentence for forgery -- remember Bob Dylan’s “When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose./You’re invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.”

My visit to the USA was 10 years ago when Bangalore had not yet become so vulnerable to a cloudburst. Much has changed over the last decade. Infosys and Wipro have become household names whose quarterly results shake the market. Bangalore had made it to the cover of Newsweek as part of a story on the alternatives to the original Silicon Vallet down San Jose way. San Jose never experienced anything like a power-cut in the few days I was there in August 1995. And the idea of a cloudburst knocking out San Jose never occurred to us! The original Silicon Valley from what I remember of it was a valley which was not confined to San Jose. Neither was its American alternative on the outskirts of Boston confined to what a bus-tour through the Massachusetts capital advertised as “See the town that built Jack” (Kennedy). The reason for the original Silicon Valley not being an urban phenomenon could have been due to the quality of the highways connecting one city to the other. Ergo, the amenities of modern civilisation like schools, hospitals did not also have to come up within a city. Houses could likewise be outside city limits.

Which could explain the dilemma Bangalore finds itself in today where the better schools, hospitals and broadband infrastructure are all within the city. It could be because of the consequent ITO-BPO boom in Bangalore that the city sees a daily accretion of almost a 1,000 vehicles on the potholed roads. Given the creaking infrastructure and no way to set it right granted the perception that any tax-hike could manifest itself in an unhappy reaction in the very next poll, no one wants to rock the creaking boat. To continue with the simile, boats could well be required the next time there is a cloudburst over India’s Garden City! Even that botanical name used by the country’s first prime minister to describe the city has become part of the problem in Bangalore. Each downpour sees falling branches not just knocking off the power wires but also smashing the roofs of vehicles parked below. With storm-drain covers missing, there have been instances of drivers not being able to see through the rain and vehicles ending up in the storm drains with the occupants drowning.

Like in the case of other cities in extremis, many Bangaloreans turn a blind eye. Some do their version of a dance on the decks of the Titanic at the nearest disco or the Palace Grounds while Bryan Adams croons “18 till I die!” Meanwhile the city gets even more hopelessly polarised as politicians in search of quick returns further widen the divide between the haves and the have-nots by blaming the former for the problems of the latter. In a system where public funding is severely constrained, one way out could be to let non-governmental initiatives flourish when it comes to seeking solutions to civic problems. A Bangalore Improvement Trust funded through a cess levied on Bangaloreans could be one solution if there is total transparency in collection, conceptualisation and implementation. The other solution could be through a decentralised ward-byward approach involving local selfgovernment in its truest sense!

What we have instead is a unique approach to urban planning. First residential layouts are sanctioned and it is only months after the apartment residents have moved in that the negotiations begin for providing the access roads and water and other connections. Finally, each apartment ends up paying lakhs under the table for infrastructural services ostensibly developed through taxes! In some offices, Friday is considered a good day for the undeclared collection which is synchronised with the weekly puja! Which is surely the death of a city when even the Gods are sought to be made into accomplices!