Everyone has a STAKE

Everyone has a STAKE
POINT 2: Why don’t we have a nodal agency like the Bangalore Agenda Task Force?
TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Bangalore: A few years have passed since Bangalore’s infrastructure projects started coming with the PPP tag. Public Private Partnership, in administrative terms, has largely been about cost-sharing in individual projects. In a city with a host of civic agencies and no nodal body to monitor their functions, the PPP could be the way forward in pushing for policy-level divisions towards a better, greater Bangalore.
The Bangalore Agenda Task Force (BATF) — a short-lived experiment with a PPP model of urban development in 1999 — is a pointer to the concept. BATF had taken shape almost at the cusp of Bangalore’s shift from a laidback city to a vibrant, global metropolis, making the move timely in planning the city for the future.
With expanded territory and a burgeoning population, the city has come a long way from 1999. The revival of a high-level task group to monitor development in Bangalore could now mean an added focus on setting right the wrongs that have already been done. Long-term planning can, perhaps, only follow.
Representatives of the private sector refer to projects like the Bangalore Traffic and Transport Initiative (BTTI) to make a case for private participation in the city’s development. “The previous state government had recognized that the BTTI — an off-shoot of City Connect, a body that includes many state industry chambers, companies and citizens’ bodies — can play a significant role in improving the city’s traffic situation,’’ says Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, CMD, Biocon and member of City Connect.
Shaw adds that B S Yeddyurappa, who was part of the previous government, was among the first to acknowledge the value of BTTI. When issues like traffic congestion pose a tough ask for the police force, initiatives like the BTTI become critical in chalking out measures like posting of traffic marshals at junctions and designing intermodal transport hubs.
Private participation could work in projects involving garbage disposal and drain restructuring as well, according to industry leaders. “Every major city in the world has bodies like these. They can assist in planning, in monitoring quality and ensuring project timelines,’’ says Shaw.
The lack of co-ordination among the civic agencies has cost the city dear, sometimes reflected in open debates between the stakeholders. When the traffic police point out that the BDA and BBMP sanction plans for buildings without parking space, without consulting the police, erring sub-registrars feel the heat over land encroachment from revenue department officials themselves. The task group could be the nodal authority to devise the guidelines, monitor their implementation and initiate follow-up action on cases of violation.
According to R K Misra, winner of The Times of India’s Lead India initiative, the government can create institutions that involve citizens in planning and monitoring of projects. “Citizens can add a lot of value in every area of city development. We demonstrated that in the previous government, through its empowered committee on infrastructure,’’ says Misra.
With initiatives like the recentlyconstituted Bangalore Metropolitan Land Transport Authority (BMLTA), the government has taken a step towards a systematic monitoring of different agencies working on the same domain.
An undivided focus on Bangalore and a subsequent backlash by the rural voters were perceived as reasons for successive governments losing interest in putting together a group on the lines of BATF. According to members of the defunct BATF, vote bank-driven political decisions had led to the winddown of the perceivedly ‘urban’ body. But in post-delimitation Bangalore, development weighed down by political compulsions could mean another chance of revival gone abegging.
toiblr.reporter@timesgroup.com