Lost Expressway 3: Expressway is the way but not for govt

Expressway is the way but not for govt
IT Philips, Dell, Motorola stay off tech fair; expressway is litmus test for state’s commitment

Indian Express

Getting ready for IT fair on Monday BANGALORE, OCTOBER 24: As Finance Minister P Chidambaram tries to persuade Infosys Chief Mentor N R Narayana Murthy to rescind his resignation as Chairman of Bangalore’s International Airport, here’s another issue he might want his local government to dwell on: how to get to the airport.

The promise to complete the airport—at least two years away—is in itself an ‘‘achievement’’ proferred by the Karnataka government. But the road to the airport is a perpetually jammed, primitive two-lane highway: It can take upto 90 minutes to get to the airport today from the Infosys office at the other end of Bangalore.

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‘‘Every city, whether Kuala Lumpur or Shanghai, has an expressway or train service to reach the airport,’’ said Bob Hoekstra, CEO of Philips Software and a member of the Karnataka government’s advisory ‘‘empowered committee’’. ‘‘I have seen no such plan.’’

Hoekstra, a Dutchman, is also head of Bangalore IT Forum, a group of 25 mainly tech multinationals (among them: Texas Instruments, HP, Novell, Bosch, Dell, Motorola), which are boycotting Bangalore IT.com, India’s biggest tech jamboree. Sponsored by the government, it starts tomorrow. The chief guest: H D Deve Gowda.

If that seems odd considering how Gowda has jeered at Bangalore’s 1,584 IT companies and their Rs 27,000-crore exports of software and other invisibles, sources close to the chief minister said the idea was to get Gowda to talk directly to the tech sector, a move that might prompt a rapproachment. The Bangalore IT Forum simply isn’t impressed.

They told the government last month that they would only withdraw a boycott call if the state sponsored a BangaloreIT.Com session, which would outline a clear plan for the city’s infrastructure. ‘‘We have received no reply, so our boycott stands,’’ confirmed Hoekstra. ‘‘We will only consider withdrawal (of the boycott) in 2006.’’

In a recent briefing to The Indian Express, Karnataka Chief Minister Dharam Singh and a battery of officials explained all they were doing to reduce Bangalore’s manic congestion: one of the biggest plans is a Rs 1,100 crore 109-km peripheral ring road with upto 10 lanes—in six years.

But wait: Isn’t a state-of-the-art peripheral expressway—part of a 175-km string of expressways and townships eventually sprawling up to Mysore—ready to open its first 8-km stretch by December?

Of course it is, but thanks to coalition partner Gowda’s fallout with the expressway builder, the Karnataka government will talk of everything else—except the Rs 2,000-crore project being built by NRI Ashok Kheny, promoted by Pune’s Kalyani Group and funded partially by a consortium of banks led by ICICI in Mumbai.

It just doesn’t make sense, but no official will dare suggest that the expressway can be extended to the airport. Here’s how the lack of a vision for what is now firmly a global city—and a personalised vendetta—is costing Bangalore dearly:

• First, the expressway, being built by Kheny’s Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprise, is an immediate route to decongestion. Journeys that now last upto two gruelling hours could shrink to 15 minutes within eight months.

• Second, the project costs a cash-strapped government nothing, since Nandi is paying for both the cost of land acquisition (Rs 82.5 crore has already been paid to date) and construction.

• Third, the success of the project is a litmus test for foreign investment—especially in infrastructure—not just in Karnataka but in India.

‘‘We would certainly like to build some of the townships (second phase of the Nandi project), but certainly we will not invest if the present situation continues,’’ a spokesman for one of Japan’s top five construction companies (with successful similar projects completed in Malaysia and Taiwan) told The Indian Express over e-mail, requesting his company not be named. ‘‘We must mention that the support of the government to such projects is a means by which countries are judged worthy (of investment).’’

That support is sorely lacking. So is the vision needed to put the expressway to optimum use. Urban planners point out how the peripheral expressway—now being carved as a semi circle from the north-west to the south-east—should logically be continued further north to touch the Bangalore International Airport. ‘‘It’s logical,’’ admitted a senior bureaucrat, ‘‘but that simply won’t happen. How can it with the present situation?’’

And so the shunning of the expressway could simply lead to Bangalore shooting itself in the foot. Consider: At its southern end, the peripheral expressway touches National Highway 7, the road along which Electronics City (where Infosys is headquartered) is situated. A state-sponsored 11-km elevated road—paid for partially by tech companies—is likely to soar over the expressway.

They intersect, but for now, no one talks of ensuring the two highways interact.