Green turning grey

Green turning grey
With each passing day, Bangalore is becoming more and more grey. What once used to be the pensioner’s paradise is metamorphosing into a corporate jungle. Arun Prasad looks into what went wrong.

It is believed that the name ‘Bengaluru’ originated from ‘Benga-Ooru’, which means the place of Benga trees (Raktha Honne) or petro-carpus-marsupium, the botanical name of it and gradually anglicised to ‘Bangalore’. The city has also earned the sobriquet of ‘Garden City’. But how far does the present scenario support this? How green is our city now?

Imagine a smokey grey Bangalore with only concrete structures, flyovers, metro and monorails outlining the city skyline. The dark thought is not an alarmist’s binocular vision but a possible nightmare. The charming greenery of the city now faces a bleak future.

The city is losing its green cover with at least a dozen trees perishing with each passing day after being chopped to make way for flyovers, skyscrapers and advertisement hoardings or by falling trees due to rains resulting in a drastic change in climatic conditions, increasing pollution, accelerating temperature and so on.

The rich heritage earned through the years have taken a setback. The ‘naturally air-conditioned city’ is fast metamorphosing into a ‘dry choking city’. It clearly reverberates lack of controlled growth and planning by authorities.

Much of the developmental activity today in Bangalore is in reaction to the needs of high-tech companies. With each passing day, the government is announcing a new hi-tech park. IT park, bio-tech park, hardware-park, textile park, the list goes on, the latest being the jewellery park. It is sad that the thought of a ‘green park’ with plants and trees has never run through their minds.

Despite the city’s high-tech advances, it has been a loser on many other fronts. The city’s excessive growth has brought in severe ills as the climate and the environment here turn major losers. On many occasions, the government has even relaxed regulations to accommodate ambitious development projects encroaching on prime agricultural lands and vital green spaces. According to Karnataka State Forest Report 2001, Bangalore city just has 7.4 per cent forest cover of its total geographical area. The rapid and unplanned expansion may make the city vulnerable to devastation.

According to a report by the Environment Support Group, “the Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (Bangalore City Corporation) starting March 2005 has been chopping trees lining Bangalore’s avenues in the name of widening roads to ease traffic congestion. Over 700 trees were slated to be cut down on about 50 roads of Bangalore.This list, prepared by the technical advisor to the BMP in November 2004, based on requests made by the traffic police, has earmarked felling 38 trees along Sampige Road, the pride of Malleswaram; 58 trees along Bull Temple Road; almost all the trees in Gandhi Bazaar; 35 trees on Dr Rajkumar Road in Rajajinagar. As on 21 April 2005, over 70 trees have have been chopped” – the list is long and shocking.

As part of rapid urbanisation, unhindered construction activities on encroached lung spaces mocks the significance of the existing law protecting the green cover of the city, sounding death knell for these life saviours.



Gardening history

Many ancient literary sources speak of udyanas and pushpa vatikas. There are many references of Ashoka and Kadamba forests that existed in ancient India. Royal houses and the temples of yore had parks and gardens around. But it was with the advent of Mughals, that the art of gardening in India received special attention.

The fine art of gardening in Bangalore was perfected during the days of Hyder Ali, the then Mysore ruler. It was in 1760, a 40-acre pleasure park known as ‘Lalbagh’ was laid out modelled on the lines of Mughal gardens at Sira. He even imported plants from Multan, Delhi, Lahore and Arcot. Hyder Ali’s son Tipu Sultan expanded the garden and improved it by getting seeds and exotic plants from Mauritius, Turkey and Africa. After Tipu’s fall, Lalbagh came under Major Waugh, a botanist with East India Company and was later taken over by the Calcutta Botanical Establishment. In 1831, the administration of the garden was passed on to the Chief Commissioner of Mysore.

In 1836, Sir Mark Cubbon, the then Chief Commissioner transferred it to the Horticultural Society of Calcutta. The Society was dissolved and subsequently Lalbagh was handed back to the Chief Commissioner of Mysore. In 1856, Lalbagh became the Government Botanical Garden. Contributions of John Cameron, G H Krumbiegal, H C Javaraya and Dr M H Marigowda towards the development of the garden is significant.

In 1870, John Meade, the then Acting Commissioner of Mysore, laid out the foundation of Cubbon Park on a 100-acre plot, which is now spread across 300 acres including 50 acres of built-up area. It was landscaped by Major-General Sir Richard Sankey, the then chief engineer of Mysore. It was originally known as ‘Meades Park’ and subsequently came to be known as Cubbon Park. In 1927, the park was renamed ‘Sri Chamarajendra Park’ to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of Sri Krishnaraja Wodeyar’s rule in Mysore State. The promenade with shady flowering trees and lush green lawns make Cubbon Park an ideal place for joggers. Even this ‘Gem of Bangalore’ seems to be losing its serene beauty with many high-rise buildings mushrooming on its beds.

In the second half of the 19th century, during the British era, in addition to Cubbon Park, a number of small-sized parks sprang up in the cantonment area.

“The Englishmen, who found Bangalore an ideal place to live wanted to create ‘the green’ of the English countryside here. They adorned their homes with beautiful gardens. Of course, Bangalore had ‘no parched plains and no dust-laden sky even in summer’. So the scent of flowers filled its air,” says Fazlul Hasan, in his book ‘Bangalore Through the Centuries’.

In 1931, under the guidance of Sir M Visvesvaraya and Sir Mirza Ismail, the Dewans of Mysore, the city was beautified on high priority. The Cubbon Park was vastly extended by planting more trees, beautiful circle and square gardens formed at junctions of important roads.

It is not just because of Cubbon Park and Lalbagh that Bangalore has earned the tag ‘Garden City’. It was named after its fine landscape, tree-lined avenues, circle gardens, fine lakes, architectural monuments with greenery everywhere. It was a clean city with gardens all over.



Missing orchards

Once dotted with innumerable ornamental gardens and orchards, of which some of them had lent its floral name to the locality, have lost its gardens with only their floral names left. Marappa Thota, Tulsi Thota, Chikkalalbagh, Rose Garden, the saddening long list goes on.

A pleasant ‘Rose Garden’ at Viveknagar, which lends its name to the Infant Jesus Church as the Rose Garden Church, has fully vanished with no remnants of the garden remaining.

‘Silver Jubilee Park’ on the stretch of land opposite Town Hall till the Jamia Masjid near City market was created in 1927 to commemorate the silver jubilee of King Krishna Rajendra Wodeyar IV’s regime. His period was considered to be the golden era of Mysore State as it was called the model state. The park has been badly hit by the Town Hall-Sirsi Circle flyover with many trees being felled today and stands as a mere shadow of its former grandeur.

Many orchards of Bangalore, including the ‘Palace Orchards’, which once produced abundant grapes have been transformed into residential layouts.

There are accounts of apple cultivation in the farms around Bangalore in the early years of 20th century which produced ‘Rome Beauty’ among the most priced variety planted over 450 acres in the city orchards.



Floral avenues

Till a few decades back, most of the roads in Banglaore were tree-lined. Today, its hard to find a tree-lined avenue and many with just their floral names remain. Among those include Sampige Road, Margosa Road and Coconut Avenue Road in Malleswaram, Primrose Road near M G Road, and the busy Avenue Road. At Airport road and on Sankey road, trees which obstructed the vision of advertisement hoardings have been cut. On national highways and other peripheral roads, trees were cut for road-widening. At Ambedkar Vedhi, trees were cut to give a better view for the newly built Vikasa Soudha.

Circle gardens were part of the city’s heritage. In 1970, there were 52 circle gardens maintained by the Municipal Corporation.They had well-manicured gardens, with lamp posts and colourful fountains at its centre.

The fountain circle that existed in front of the Town Hall was a fine example. Circles which were made to maintain safe traffic movement are vanishing, making way for the burgeoning traffic. Today we are left with only a few which reminds one of city’s nostalgic past.



Shrinking greenbelt

Greenbelt policy, a concept for controlling metropolitan growth, was first introduced in London.The fundamental aim of green belt policy was to prevent urban sprawl by keeping land permanently open, and consequently the most important attribute of green belts is their openness. The introduction of green belts was the culmination of over 50 years of environmentalist pressure with roots in the Garden Cities Movement and widespread academic interest in combating urban sprawl and ribbon development.

In Bangalore, the drastic dwindling down of open spaces from 80 per cent in 1925 to 40 per cent in 1980 cautioned the authorities to think of a plan that restricts city’s haphazard growth. Thus in 1982, the green belt was formed with the mission of ‘greening the metropolis’, creating about 742 sq kms stretch of green space surrounding the city. It was also decided to take up tree planting operations on the streets, parks, schools and college premises and public institutions.

It is disheartening to learn the report of High Court, based on a public interest petition filed against the BDA in 1997, that most of the area coming under the greenbelt have been found with layouts, resorts and stone quarries.

Since April 2004, Bangalore has lost 6,295 acres of farmland and urban sprawl has continued to spill over into Bangalore’s greenbelt. This has reduced the belt by 4.28 per cent in the last 10 years and the Bangalore Development Authority recently announced a master plan that would further reduce the greenbelt to 494 sq km by 2015. On the contrary, the urban sprawl is going up to 812 sq km from 564 sq km of the 1995 plan.

When considering a global climatic change, the destruction of plants through clear cutting and burning could raise atmospheric carbon dioxide levels above expectations. Because of direct competition, the aspiration levels in urban areas are very high, and this has an indirect effect on the environment, causing more industrialisation, and greater pollution.

In this regard, two countries – India and China, are suddenly in focus. Both countries have the largest population base, are recording the fastest economic growth, and with rapid urbanisation, if badly managed, could be a disaster.

One should be aware of the disaster that swept away two great cities from the world map. It has been proved that large-scale deforestation has caused the once flourishing Angkor City in Cambodia and Mayan City in South America to perish completely.

These two cities today remain just as a tourist destination with only ruins in the heart of a jungle. In these cities, deforestation caused severe climatic changes causing droughts and then floods.

Unlike Mumbai and Chennai, Bangalore does not have a seashore to provide regular oxygen. There is an urgent need for an action plan to save the vanishing greens or else the city habitants will have to carry oxygen cylinders on their backs.

An integrated methodology has to be developed in the city to assess the role of green space in alleviating the adverse effects of urbanisation. The city still has an opportunity to be rejuvenated and remodelled to symbolise a new beginning for a new India and set a fine example for the other growing cities of the world to follow.