Bangalore has over 5.6 million vehicles – automobiles and motorcycles – and that number grows by over a 1,000 every single day. But it has only 8.2 kilometers of roads per square kilometer. That is less than half the road density of the national capital, 21.6 km. per sq. km., which has 6.5 million vehicles. Bangalore’s total road network, spanning 10,200 km., also falls way behind that of New Delhi’s 32,000 km., according to the Global Mobility Monitor Network. Still, the Numbeo traffic index ranks Bangalore only the fifth worst in India – behind Kolkata, Mumbai, New Delhi and Gurugram. But perception is far worse and who is to argue with drivers stuck on Bangalore roads in rush hour when speeds rarely exceed 10 kilometers an hour? Bangalore doesn’t fare well on esthetics either. Rapid development has turned most parts of the city into an ugly urban sprawl. Its buildings offend sensibilities in a city known for such architectural landmarks as the Vidhana Soudha, seat of the Karnataka state legislature. Its flyovers are an eyesore, and are singularly held responsible for the stripping away of large centuries-old trees. The city’s billboards, many of them put up illegally, are another curse. Even the utilitarian Metro is a blight, having 32 www.theglobalinvestor.com
ruined forever the city’s iconic Mahatma Gandhi Road, and a lot of other leafy suburbs. It is for all these reasons that Bangalore’s most famous resident historian, Ramachandra Guha, who has taught at global universities including Stanford and Yale, blames the politicians. He believes the state of Karnataka has been “blessed by geography, history and culture but cursed by politics.” Since the mid-1980s, Karnataka has been ruled by shortsighted leaders who have preferred to preside over corrupt or inefficient administrations, often both, oblivious to the ecological and environmental ruin of Bangalore. It’s no wonder that many Bangaloreans see a losing battle on most fronts – air, water, roads, transport and housing, to name a few. Few believe in a better tomorrow, and some scientists have actually gone ahead and written the city’s obituary. In 2016, researchers at the Indian Institute of Science assessed five global cities, including Bangalore and Mumbai, on an urban sustainability index. They found that Bangalore fared worse than Singapore, London and Shanghai, but better than Mumbai, presumably because the coastal city faces additional threat from climate change. The researchers blamed Bangalore’s poor score
on environmental degradation and poor planning. In another joint study by IISc, University of Melbourne and China’s Chang’an University, researchers found that half of Bangalore’s CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions come from the technology industry and the cars used by its workforce, directly linking the progressive deterioration of the city to so-called development and associated urban growth policies, or the lack of them. Prof. T. V. Ramachandra, of the IISc’s Centre for Ecological Sciences, has extensively studied the city’s water bodies. In a report, he observed thus: “Geo-visualisation of likely land uses in 2020 through multi-criteria decision-making techniques (Fuzzy-AHP: Analytical Hierarchal Process) reveals calamitous picture of 93% of Bangalore landscape filled with paved surfaces (urban cover) and drastic reduction in open spaces and green cover. This would make the region GHG-rich (greenhouse gases), water scarce, non-resilient and unlivable, depriving the city dwellers of clean air, water and environment.” That, he later told the Bangalore daily Deccan Herald, “is an unrealistic and tragic growth. Our children will not have clean air, clean water, and clean environment, all of which go against Article 21 of the (Indian) Constitution.”