Amenities-starved locals see ray of hope

Amenities-starved locals see ray of hope
Deccan Herald

“If Greater Bangalore is going to get us drinking water, good roads and waste disposal systems, then it should happen.” This is what residents of Bommanahalli City Municipal Council say about the Government’s move to form Bruhat Bengalooru, by merging the seven CMCs, one TMC and 111 village areas with the existing Bangalore Mahanagara Palike.

Having suffered from lack of basic civic amenities for years now and witnessed the CMC’s inability to deliver these services, residents now see a ray of hope in Greater Bangalore. So much so they are even ready to pay higher taxes for these services.

“I’ve no problem paying more tax. But we want decent civic amenities,” says Shailaja, a teacher in a government primary school and a resident of Hulimavu.

Almost 80 per cent of the CMC area do not have motorable roads, and the entire populace in the CMC’s jurisdiction depends on borewell water. And there is no underground drainage system at all. Worse still, people even today use unhygienic soak pits (an alternative to underground drainage) and get it cleaned every three months manually by scavengers.

Worrisome

The residents sure are excited about the prospect of soon having these amenities once Greater Bangalore becomes a reality, but they are bit worried too. “I hope Greater Bangalore will be planned well. It should not go the way of the CMC ‘experiment’, which failed to live up to people’s expectations,” Gopal Reddy, a local leader, points out.

Why do most areas have no basic amenities despite being thickly populated? “Nearly 70 per cent of the localities are revenue layouts (in other words, private layouts). The private land developers hardly provide any amenities. What they have done is to carve sites out of the land without forming layouts and allot them,” explains Muralidhar, a councillor in Bommanahalli CMC.