Puttenahalli still waits...

Puttenahalli still waits...
For Flood-Free Areas, Rebuilt Drainage System & Good Roads
The TImes of India

Bangalore: Yesterday once more.
Houses in roof-deep drain water, entire areas without electricity or phone lines, waterborne diseases, a lake breaching and entering kitchens, shaky foundations built atop storm water drains.

One October afternoon in 2005, the then chief minister Dharam Singh visited Puttenahalli. He walked a few yards around the area, stopped for a look at the Sarakki lake.

There he ordered officials to “rebuild drains, lay out roads and clean up the tank’’ among other measures.
On a blazing hot Sunday in March this year, chief minister Kumaraswamy visited the very place, acknowledged the conditions there and declared: Anybody who has sold land on rajakaluves to unsuspecting people will have criminal cases booked against them, no matter what political clout they have.

But out there reality reads something like this — a non-existent drainage and sewerage system, a lake that will not be able to hold even a few drops of rain. Actually, what lake? The Sarakki lake is so choked and covered with parthenium and weeds that it is difficult to say where the land begins and the lake-bed ends. The garbage of the vicinity (500 houses) is collectively dumped here. How will any water flow?

The best names in the real estate business have opened shop here. Residential complexes sport such impressive titles as Magnolia, Regalia, Tulips, Promenade, but these adjectives are suited just for the interiors. The roads that lead to them and the basements that hold them aloft are awaiting trouble.

For a perspective on the aftermath, imagine this — all of Bommanahalli with a population of over a lakh people, has some 2,500 houses. All of whom are depending on at least two solid drainage systems to keep sordid water out of their houses.

The inexplicable jurisdictional quirk here is that the Bommanahalli CMC starts off at Hosur Road, where the industrial hub is. Puttenahalli, south of Bangalore near Bannerghatta Road and Kanakapura Road are all part of the CMC! The Bommanahalli officials themselves admit to being confounded by the ‘Line of Control’ logic.

Boundary jurisdictions again dictate quality and quantity of civic work. Just off the road near Raghavendra Temple, with Ranga Shankara on one side and a hospital on the other, the roads are clean, asphalted, welllaid. In short, a perfect example of planned growth. Hundred metres away is Puttenahalli, which leads to the olfactory-offensive Sarakki and the haphazard growth. A thin asphalted road separates the BMP area from the “poorer’’ CMC area.