‘Private splendour, public squalor’
V. RAVICHANDAR, 66 Director, Bangalore International Centre
V. Ravichandar calls himself a ‘civic evangelist’. He has been on most major committees set up to improve Bengaluru in the past two decades, and attributes the recent floods to “nature’s fury over city planners violating natural drainage that ensured that water flowed from higher areas to lower ones”. Originally, much of the city was on the crest of a ridge and rainwater run-off was channelled to the valleys below through drains called rajakaluves, which fed multiple mini-lakes. In the past two decades, however, much of the growth has been in the valleys below the ridge. This includes the 17-km arc that hugs the Outer Ring Road and is the hub of its electronic and cyber cities. As companies built vast campuses with multi-storeyed buildings, no one paid heed to drainage or roads, resulting in what Ravichandar calls “private splendour amid public squalor”. He holds all governments in Karnataka culpable for everything that has gone wrong with the city. In a 2017 report warning of such floods, Ravichandar and environmental architect Mohan S. Rao outlined a series of interventions for the city’s vulnerable zones. But they were ignored. Ravichandar warns that the problem of waterlogging and floods will persist unless a proper watershed management plan is put in place.