We can then hope for planning

We can then hope for planning
Why don’t we have a minister for the city and put the bang back in Bangalore?
R Krishnakumar | TNN

Bangalore: One city, 17 MLAs and a vision statement. The BJP’s plans for Bangalore are on paper. The city’s flooding drains have already pushed two ministers — Suresh Kumar and R Ashok — on the monsoon trail, meeting residents and chalking out contingency plans. But the new, expanded Bangalore could do with more. With 28 constituencies that include under-developed fringe areas in its fold, Bangalore calls out for a ministry dedicated to planning, implementing and monitoring its development.
The search could lead to a minister who works beyond the confines of a ‘district in-charge’ portfolio. A leader who chairs the planning process of all the developmental projects and chalks out and monitors timelines for their implementation, in association with a task group of senior officials. Though heavyweight ministers have, in the past, taken charge of districts, including Bangalore, with limited success, the call for a dedicated Bangalore ministry assumes higher priority considering the extent of infrastructure bottlenecks that the city has run into in the recent years.
The terror threat perception, the rise of the land mafia and the shrinking lung spaces have all marked the shift from the old Bangalore to the new, over the past few years. The disparities in development within the city have pointed at misplaced priorities in the planning process. The traffic and transportation patterns in Bangalore, with Namma Metro and the Bengaluru International Airport as the backdrop, are also set for a major shift. The transition phase, with all the uncertainties and rising public outcry against slipshod civic planning and development, makes the city a prime candidate for a dedicated ministry.
During the run-up to the assembly elections, young voters in Bangalore had shared with The Times of India their hopes for a leader who’s not bound by political compulsions. Leader, not politician, was the line. The non-accessibility of the ministers was also a point of debate. The focus has to shift from highon-hype grievances melas to a dedicated leadership that takes the people into confidence, the voters had felt. Their wishlist also triggers possibilities that a non-political minister could bring to a city, where a lack of political will and the red tape, by turns, have contributed to slackened implementation of vision statements.
But the question — should Bangalore have a non-political minister? — doesn’t come with a straight yes/ no for an answer. For starters, there are practical difficulties for a non-political minister to make himself heard in a system lorded over by three major parties.
Bangalore can look for a parallel in the late Raja Ramanna, former Union minister of state for defence.
Another case in point is B R Kundal, the former Jammu & Kashmir chief secretary who has been nominated as the first non-political person in 33 years to be inducted in the state cabinet. But the agenda to drive the vision of Mr Minister for Bangalore, political shades or not, will be transparency and a will to serve.