Bengaluru: A city drowning in neglect
Water crisis can only be addressed through adaptive management and innovation in the face of climate change and urban demands
Iwas saddened by my recent visit to Bengaluru, the fastest growing, techno-modern metro in India. It is the city I grew up in and which I love so much, but it is often more exasperating than exhilarating. Home not only to many back-end offices of Fortune 500 majors and multinationals, it is also India’s software and business outsourcing capital.
It also serves as the headquarters of some of India’s best companies such as Infosys, Wipro, and Biocon. At close to 3,000 feet above sea level, it also has the coolest weather year-round of any major Indian city.
With its host of thriving highquality educational institutions,
Bengaluru is the magnet of talent and hope for millions of aspiring young Indians. It is, without doubt, the youth and consumer, in addition to the technological, capital of the country.
Unfortunately, decades of unplanned, almost out-of-control growth, with a notoriously corrupt administrative system also make Bengaluru an urban nightmare for millions who reside there. Its traffic woes are legendary. Coming into any one of its many business districts from the airport can easily take two hours.
Civic amenities are also really poor despite the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), or the Bengaluru Municipality, being wealthier than several smaller states in India and second only to Mumbai’s Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation. Bengaluru, once a city of lakes and gardens, has lost most of both.
Being on a plateau, water retention is also lower than the surrounding plains. The nearest river, Kavery, from which water is pumped at enormous expense, is 90km away. With too many borewells, most of them unauthorised, and no mandatory water-harvesting requirements in place, the city now faces a severe water shortage.
So dire is the crisis that many of Bengaluru’s hundreds of thousands of techies are leaving for their hometowns to tide over the water woes. After Covid 19, it is the shortage of water that is driving people out of the city.
Some areas of the city have received not a drop of the municipal supply. They are at the mercy of the water mafia which controls the tanker supply. The rates per tanker have also skyrocketed from Rs600 to Rs2,500 (Dh110) in some places.
Here is where we come to the central paradox of Bengaluru. It has India’s smartest people, but still suffers from the worst urban infrastructure and planning. If some of these smart people are allowed to find a solution, then the solutions that Bengaluru comes up with will serve as a blueprint for other cities too. For only through adaptive management and innovative practices can acute water security be assured in the face of changing climatic conditions and urban demands.
For this to happen, however, there must be zero political interference, zero corruption, and zero incompetence.
Many may have, but I still haven’t given up. I hope to see the day when Namma Bengalaru (my Bengaluru) will be a shining city on top of a hill that it was always meant to be, a symbol of optimism and transformation, an inspiration to other mega conurbations around the world.