Metro rail welcome

President of the Federation of Karnataka Chamber of Commerce and Industries (FKCCI) S Babu was born and brought up in Bangalore. The man, who loves the City from the depth of his heart, spoke about the things that Bangalore was famous for a few years back and what it is famous for now.
Metro Rail welcome
Vijay Times


Our City had a clean and peaceful atmosphere. It had essential resources like water, power, and goo transportation facilities. The states population, density of which was less then, was helpful hospitable. More importantly, the cost of living w not high. These factors were among several others that appealed to me.

Today, there has been a sea of change. Right from food, there has been a change in everything.

Particularly after 1992, things started chang rapidly because of factors like privatisati increase in floating population, cable TV and com puters.

However, the basic character of the City has just not changed despite a heavy influx of people from other states in recent days. I am happy that at heart, Bangalore is still an innocent and peaceful City.

The City is being transformed. There are banks that will give you credit cards and loans, and finance options, whether youre looking to buy a Rs 1 crore penthouse or a Rs 1 lakh wrist watch.

Starting from grocery stores to big malls, the qua ity of products available here is at par with the ity of products that have international standards.

However, nearly 40 percent of the population is poor, without access to basic amenities such water and sanitation. Income figures from the 1991 census data indicate that 24 percent of the popula tion shares 8 percent of the income whereas 4 percent of the population shares 19 percent of the t income. There is no reason to think that this disp ity has not widened in the intervening decade.

The City has grown.The pace of construction is nothing less than crazy; traffic is near-impossibl navigate during rush hours ; more slums h cropped up and everything is at least 10 times mo expensive.

Though some of these changes have benefitted engineering and management graduates, workers such as maids, construction workers and drivers, for a large segment of the population, the changes are meaningless. The whole IT boom means nothing. Except, may be a higher cost of living.

Take the aspect of income. Today, the City is witnessing an unprecedented change in the lifestyles of families whose income is derived from the software industry.

For instance, nuclear families, with both the husband and wife earning fabulous salaries as softwar engineers in multinational companies, have a lifestyle that is utterly different from that of, average state government official, managing a extended family.

Population here has grown from about 8 lakh in 1951 to 7 million today. Bangalores challenge is t it has grown at 12 percent a year over the last de in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which makes it the fastest growing City in the country. However, the infrastructure has obviously not kept pace.

A point of concern is that while our City roads ar equipped to handle up to 8 lakh vehicles daily, mo than 24 lakh vehicles are plying on our roads dail An additional 4 lakh vehicles from other parts of country enter our City every day. This has result in traffic jams, pollution (both air and noise), f wastage and accidents and also in roads being worn out. In this regard, the governments initiative to introduce the Bangalore Metro to alleviate transportation problems is a welcome move. But a lot more needs to be done.