Managing Bangalore is a herculean task

Managing Bangalore is a herculean task



Jayaker JeromeFirst Published : 13 Jun 2009 08:20:10 AM ISTLast Updated : 13 Jun 2009 10:11:03 AM IST
BANGALORE: I had the good fortune of spending the last years of my career in the civil service in Mumbai as Secretary to the Governor of Maharashtra, the suave and erudite SM Krishna. The Mumbai Municipal Corporation is the largest in the country whose annual budget exceeds that of some states. It runs schools, huge hospitals and even medical colleges. The joke that is repeatedly tossed about in Mumbai’s bureaucratic circles is that the Mumbai Municipal Corporation is not managed by the incumbent Corporation Commissioner but by retired Commissioners who offer their unsolicited advice through the columns of a leading daily. Let me emphatically state that I have no intention of following the “Mumbai model”. My only intention is to state the obvious on the basis of not just my bureaucratic experience but more importantly on the basis of one who was born in and grown up with this great city.
Managing Bangalore is no easy task. This fast growing metropolis has myriads of problems. To add to this are the multiplicity of agencies tasked with the city’s governance eg, the BDA, BWSSB, BESCOM, BMTC to name a few. The flooding that one witnesses or rather experiences today was unheard of in the past. I can say this with the utmost confidence as a fifth generation Bangalorean. Those of us who were born and brought up in this city have some idea of what went wrong.
The 1980s were preceded by a decade of drought. As a result Bangalore’s famed lakes which kept the city’s temperature under check disappeared . And very strangely the Government of the day encouraged the BDA to develop the dry tank beds into layouts and recreation centres. Thus came into existence layouts like HRBR,OMBR, ST Bed layout to name just three. And private developers were not far behind. The Bangalore Golf Club has come up on the Chellaghatta lake. The National Games Village is again located in the basin of a lake. Our forefathers constructed these lakes on the “balancing principle” i.e., the overflow of one lake flows into the one downstream and is repeated till all the excess water is drained off in the four valleys that are supposed to provide a natural drain off - the Koramangala Valley, the Challaghatta Valley, the Hebbal Valley and the Vrushbhavarathy Valley. These four natural drainage valleys are today the victims of rampant encroachment and siltation apart from being the receptacles of all manner of city waste and garbage.
Storm water drains have sewage pipes laid in them which obstructs the flow of rain water.
Closer home there is something else which has been happening over the last nine years or so. In our exuberance to show case Bangalore as the “IT Capital”, roads are being asphalted and re-asphalted , medians are being laid on a war footing , roads are being widened and magic underpasses are the order of the day. Very laudable initiatives no doubt. However, the question that begs an answer is “At what cost ?” Today whenever flooding takes place the standard reply is “low-lying areas”. I do not remember even as a college student in the late sixties areas like MG Road, Brigade Road, Vittal Mallya Road (then Grant Road), KH Road ever flooding as they do today. This list is not exhaustive but only illustrative.
In my view therefore the contributory factors for the problem of Bangalore flooding are two-fold. Firstly what has been inherited from the recent past and secondly acts of commission and omission of the immediate past. I have no intentions of pontificating, much less offering solutions. No one, least of all I, have a magic wand to wish away all of Bangalore’s ills. I will only make bold to offer some suggestions.
The four natural drainage valleys of Bangalore i.e., Koramangala, Challaghatta, Hebbal and Vrishbhavaty have to be scientific drained, desilted and trained. Along with this the subsidiary drains should also merit equal treatment. The city’s storm water drains would require modernisation. A key in all these works is to scientifically determine bed levels and match construction to those levels to ensure that water really drains off. For it to be really effective, this is not a project which can be taken up piece meal or in isolation. It has to be executed in it’s totality covering the whole City.
Concomitant with this should be the ruthless removal of all encroachments that even remotely affect the natural flow of water.
Housing colonies that have come up in tank beds obviously cannot be removed. Protective measures need to be undertaken for such areas.
Simple works based on sound engineering principles would certainly mitigate the hardships to tolerable levels.
Asphalting of roads is instantly visible, attracts immediate kudos and is consequently a great temptation for any city manager. However, for asphalting to be really effective certain activities are a sine-qua-non. Longitudinal drains and shoulder drains need to be cleaned and desilted.
Bed levels should be taken and relaid if need be. Lead off drains and outlets merit the same serious attention. Water especially stagnant water is asphalt’s greatest enemy. This explains why even recently asphalted roads are pot-holed and surfaces washed away resulting in craters. Asphalting or re-asphalting a road requires basic engineering knowledge and skills.
Any works on existing roads should be preceded by a Benkelman’s Test the results of which indicate the health of the road in terms of strength, camber etc. It is the Benkelman’s Test which determines whether the road requires strengthening, camber correction and the camber required.
This ensures not only drain off of surface water but also a smooth riding surface.
When anything goes wrong the blame game starts off in right earnest. A frustrated citizenry blames the bureaucracy. In turn the bureaucracy gets defensive and goes on to a justification mode. In such a surcharged atmosphere even a stray remark or an off the cuff remark can result in the most unforeseen of consequences. Civic consciousness and bureaucratic sensitivity are two sides of the same coin that will bring back to Bangalore the sheen it has lost over the past few years.