`Unplanned growth has led to chaos'

`Unplanned growth has led to chaos'
The Hindu

"The older plans for a city like Bangalore did not anticipate or provide for such rapid growth in terms of businesses and population. The roads were designed for a few lakh vehicles while there are 24 lakh vehicles on our roads today,'' environmentalist K.P.S. Chauhan tells K. Satyamurty.

Mr. Chauhan, who is now living in Bangalore, served at a top position in the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests for several years.

Roads are engineered with a specific "carrying capacity" in mind and cannot cope with much larger numbers of users. "Like many other States, Karnataka too lacked a perspective in urban planning and what we see is the result of haphazard urbanisation. For instance, the overcrowded roads. For widening the roads, trees have to be cut down, and footpaths for pedestrians keep shrinking. There are no dedicated lanes for different types of vehicles, and there is more chaos on roads,'' Mr. Chauhan says.

A direct consequence of traffic congestion has been the impact on air pollution from vehicle emission. "I have been visiting Bangalore since 1971 and have seen the air quality deteriorating, and one cause has been a very lenient interpretation of pollution control laws by policy-makers. Alternative fuels such as gas should not be only for autorickshaws, but like in Delhi even buses must run on gas if at all the air quality is to improve,'' he says.

Solid waste management or rather mismanagement is another matter of concern. The 2003 Central legislation has made it mandatory for civic bodies such as the Bangalore Mahanagara Palike to have scientific landfills, but they are still at a planning stage now. If waste disposal is not taken seriously enough, you could end up with pollution of groundwater. It is beginning to happen around Bangalore, he says.

When he was with the Union Government, he drafted legislation for wetland but it never got enacted as a law. The forest laws do cover wetland, but may not be comprehensive enough to deal with all of them ranging from small and larger lakes to marshes. "Both the preservation and use of water bodies, for instance, where to fish and how much to fish without depleting the resources and upsetting the wetland ecosystem, need separate laws. At least 80 per cent of our water bodies face serious environment problems and 90 per cent of the fish caught are often inedible,'' he says.

"We have been a water-surplus country for long, but if we keep neglecting the water resources, we may end up with severe shortage by 2020. The time to act is now,'' he says.