BENGALURU: If every Bengaluru resident were handed their fair share of the city’s public parks today, it would barely cover the space of an open newspaper. With 14 million people packed into the city, each person gets less than 0.5 square metre of green grass to stand on.
This microscopic patch is expected to do the heavy lifting of cleaning our air, even as dust and traffic exhaust push city air quality well past safe limits. Yet, instead of developing new green spaces to help citizens breathe safely, the state is preparing to legally slice away a piece of the few green commons left.
Under the Karnataka Government Parks (Preservation) (Amendment) Bill, which was passed in the recently concluded legislative session, the government can take up 5% of protected parklands for infrastructure projects. Across Bengaluru’s 1,353 municipal parks spread over roughly 1,308 acres, this 5% carve-out legally unlocks more than 65 acres of precious urban commons for construction.
“Ideally, a person requires 10 to 12 square metres of green space, which means Bengaluru should have at least 30,000 acres of parks for its population. We are already running deficient by more than tenfold against healthy living standards, making this an extremely dangerous move,” said Kathyayini Chamaraj, Executive Trustee at CIVIC Bangalore. “If we concede 5% of our parks today for infrastructure, what is the guarantee that this dilution will ever stop?” she asked.
Ecologists stress that parks are interconnected, living natural systems, not empty plots waiting for concrete. “The environmental fallout of developmental activities will never remain confined just to the project boundary; it eventually spills over into every corner of the park,” said Akshay Heblikar, Director of Eco-Watch. “Excavation exposes subsoil, disrupts groundwater recharge and triggers a gradual loss of flora, fauna and peaceful sanctuaries that compensatory planting elsewhere can never restore.”
This severe green space crunch is already pricing families out of nature’s framework. “The drastic shrinkage of free public parks is creating a critical outdoor deficit for children, forcing parents into commercial, paid play arenas just to find open space,” said urban strategist Vinod Jacob. “We urgently need holistic urban planning because the city simply cannot afford to lose any more natural green buffers.”
Experts also echoed that instead of slicing into protected parks for transit shafts, the government must adopt holistic planning to shift growth toward Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities, balancing regional concentration and finally giving Bengaluru some room to breathe.
K Sinchana