Village turns tech world turns village!

Village turns tech world turns village!
20-Acre Lake Reduced To A 20 X 20 Pool; Cart Roads Set To Hold Complexes

The Times of India


Bangalore: Mahadevapura makes for a fitting case study of sheer opulence vs utter deprivation. A case for a village that became the tech park but remained backward, thanks to bad conditions.

The International Tech Park Limited, on the one hand, and layouts boasting the choicest of bungalows along roads that have never been asphalted, on the other. What was once a village is now home to the world of techies full of wi-fi freedom, massive glass facades and a virtual little world.

Even as late as 1998, the office of the Director, Land Records, notes Mahadevapura as a cluster of villages, predominantly the Pattandura Agrahara Village. The ITPL first came up as the toast of Bangalore, giving it the sobriquet of IT City. The land mafia followed suit and all hell broke loose. A casual visitor to Mahadevapura would see two classes of people, the affluent/nouveau riche and the below middle class.

Explains a long-time resident C Sharma, “Twenty years ago there were three families here. Look at the boom now, but the facilities and the land remain the same. The natural gradient of the lake has been tampered with, where will the water flow? It was only in 2005 that we had a nightmare because of the rain, there was never any problem prior to that. Simply because nature has been played with and there is bound to be havoc.’’

This is the biggest casualty of Mahadevapura — a 20-acre lake has been covered and used up to such an extent that what remains now is a 20 X 20 pool. Where will the rainwater flow really?

CMC officials shrug and throw up their hands. “There is so much vacant land, land sharks are bound to come in here. These are reputed names and they show us accurate building plans, so we just sanction the plans. We are working towards providing amenities, it will take time,’’ reasons a CMC ward engineer. Meanwhile, designated cart roads have been turned into roads to support massive complexes.

Where others dread to tread:

For a cursory idea of what is to follow, sample this. Most interior roads — where the construction industry is reaping gold — are no more than 10 feet wide but will be supporting over 1,500 apartments. There are over 15 layouts. None of them boast of a road. Storm water drains, what’s that?

All of Mahadevapura, south of ITPL, is a real estate dream and a builder’s find. And they are cashing in on it, creating a phenomenon like never before in Bangalore. Explains a marketing manager of a wellknown city-based builder-developer company: “It makes solid market sense to utilise the vacant land here. There are hundreds of IT companies employing a few thousand people. Many of them come from different parts of India and would be looking at housing options in the vicinity. Such hectic construction is actually a boom for them. Of course, we have to grapple with competition from other builders.’’

To say nothing of plan sanctions sans basic civic amenities, complexes with no solid waste management plan, no alternative methods to deal with in case of contingencies.