Let us not reinvent the wheel

Let us not reinvent the wheel



Biocon Ltd chairman and MD Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw interviews UB Group chairman Vijay Mallya on the ills of Bangalore and the possible solutions.

The Times of India

What are the five criteria of a world-class city?
i) It should be cosmopolitan; ii) Have good civic infrastructure — clean and potable water, reliable power and good sanitation; iii) Connectivity — international and domestic air connectivity, inter- and intra-city road and rail connectivity, good public transportation network both over ground and underground; iv) Safe and secure environment; effective city police and v) Visionary and stable government policies which are proactive in terms of forecasting and planning.

As a key player in the airlines business, do you see any inadequacies in the Bangalore international airport project?
The fact that passenger handling capacity had to be revised indicates poor planning. I am still not convinced that the present plan anticipates future growth. I’m afraid we’ll be woefully inadequate by 2010. We need to plan for the next 10 years. Bangalore is a natural hub for the East-West Air Corridor which we have lost to Singapore and Dubai. The present BIAL project does not even attempt to be a third hub because the planned investment simply does not address this opportunity. What is even more alarming is the thought that the travel time to the airport from Bangalore will even exceed the flight time to many destinations! Have we thought about how to shorten the access time to the airport? We are still debating on the metro link and thinking about additional access roads. Isn’t it too late? I shudder to think how long it will take to reach the airport from Whitefield or Electronics City and from the Central Business District.

How would you tackle traffic congestion in Bangalore?
Bangalore needs to demarcate its Central Business District and use tolls, congestion fees and software to regulate traffic in the CBD. Cities like London and Singapore have successfully managed traffic congestion through these methods and I don’t see why we can’t do the same. Autorickshaws need to be confined to suburbs and banned from the CBD. We need to introduce car pool lanes on Hosur Road and Whitefield Road to ease traffic density. Bangkok has transformed itself from a mega-traffic-jam city to a free-flowing traffic city through a network of tollpaying elevated roads. We need to borrow from successful ideas and not try to reinvent the wheel. We need to implement the Metro and the Mono Rail projects at breakneck speed. Schools need to manage traffic in a more responsible way. We need more multistoreyed car parks. We need underpasses and overpasses to regulate pedestrian traffic and we need to prevent stray cows and dogs from impeding traffic as well!

How should Bangalore’s development be restructured in terms of planning and administration?
We have to ensure that infrastructure needs of the city are not held hostage by political will. I have personally experienced this when UB obtained the mandate for the Elevated Light Rail project more than a decade ago. We had an excellent consortium in place and when the Karnataka government could not come up with financial contribution despite the fact that it had collected cess on motor vehicles, the project was killed. We need to create a structure within the government that allows 5-Year Plans to proceed in an uninterrupted way irrespective of a change in government.

What are your thoughts on elevated toll roads and zoning laws in the city?
Not just elevated roads, even existing ones can be made toll roads. This is the only way you can hope to regulate traffic and ease congestion. We need to have zoning based on traffic density. We pride ourselves in being the IT capital of the country and yet we hardly use technology to solve some of these issues that can easily be addressed through smart and intelligent programmes. It is sad to think that our software engineers are developing advanced traffic management systems for rest of the world while they battle Third World traffic at home.

What is the main problem of infrastructure development here?
I think it is not just Karnataka but the country as a whole. Neither is the government not prepared to commit the investment required for infrastructure development nor will it permit the private sector to do so. What’s even worse is that the government does not believe the private sector should have the freedom to decide its business model in terms of return of investment. Such political interference is bad. I am afraid we still have a long way to go in terms of economic reforms.