Growth axe threatens Garden City tag

Growth axe threatens Garden City tag
ANIL BUDUR LULLA
The elevated boulevard on Bangalore’s MG Road being razed to make way for the Metro rail. Picture by Keshav Vitla

Bangalore, April 29: Bangalore might cease to be the Garden City, the city’s older sobriquet before India’s Silicon Valley eclipsed it.

Conservationists are alarmed at the felling of trees in the name of development. The threat comes from at least a dozen projects, including flyovers, underpasses, road-widening plans and railway projects.

Now, there’s another on the list: the Metro rail. The elevated boulevard on M.G. Road is being razed to facilitate the construction of an overhead Metro station.

The city has been losing around 1,500 trees in each of the past five years. Many of them were 35 to 60 years old — witnesses to the city’s transition from being a pensioner’s paradise to an IT hotspot.

Rohan D’Souza from Hasiru Usiru (meaning green breath in Kannada), a citizens’ initiative to protect trees, says there has been a rapid depletion of greenery, especially in the past two years.

“Lack of coordination between government departments is one reason. Because of pressure from citizens’ groups, the Bangalore City Corporation has appointed a nodal tree officer whose permission is required for cutting trees,” says D’Souza.

The two-year-old NGO, which filed an application under the right to information act, was told that the corporation had permitted 1,200 trees to be axed in 2006. U. Krishna, the officer appointed by the corporation to oversee trees, concedes “there is no other way but to cut trees” if the large number of infrastructure projects are to take off.

At the same time, he said, there are more restrictions in place. “This month alone, we saved over 30 trees. In fact, in two road-widening projects, we have managed to change the alignment. As a result, we were able to save at least 50 per cent of the trees.”

The Metro alone has put 1,500 trees on the chopping block. “We have advised Metro that they have to compensate in a 1:10 ratio. For every tree cut, they have to plant 10 saplings.” But D’Souza, who fears the Metro will wipe out the green cover, says saplings are often not planted where the felling is carried out.

The Malleswaram underpass has claimed 40 trees while 1,200 were chopped to widen the highway to Mysore. Local people say these were planted over 65 years ago.

“There’s no point planting ornamental and imported trees,” said Parmeswaran, one of the residents upset at the felling of leafy Asoka trees. Some say the new trees are uprooted easily by a strong gust.

Old-timers say one could see trees on both sides of the road forming a green canopy until five years ago in Basavanagudi, Malleswaram, Indiranagar and Koramangala. The trees, D’Souza says, are also needed to absorb the emission from over 20 lakh vehicles.