BENGALURU: Improving Bengaluru roads to international standards with tree-lined avenues, funds for decentralised waste management, setting up a civic police force to monitor various violations, including building bylaw deviations, affordable housing, are among the major expectations of urban experts in the state budget being drafted by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah.
Civic activist and founder-member of Bengaluru Praja Vedike, NS Mukunda said, “Bengaluru, a city known as India’s Silicon Valley globally, is struggling to have roads without potholes. We want enough allocations to improve all the roads in the city to international standards. All these roads should have trees on either side, which will curb air and noise pollution. Also to bring back the Garden City image, mass plantation must be announced in the budget.”
Mukunda said good roads will help improve road carrying capacity and facilitate quick movement of vehicles.
Both Mukunda and Sandeep Anirudhan from Citizens’ Agenda for Bengaluru demanded that Bengaluru put an end to the never-ending garbage crisis by handling waste generated at the ward level itself, without being transported and dumped in some faraway village.
“Every ward should be allotted funds for decentralised waste management: processing of both wet and dry waste so that waste does not leave a ward, and there is extremely low dependence on landfill activity. The target should be to have zero discharge of waste,” said Anirudhan.
“The state needs to fund a separate ‘Task Force’ or ‘Civic Police’ with sufficient manpower and infrastructure to be a credible enforcer of all laws and rules regarding civic governance, such as building bylaws, layout formation, water, electricity, sewage, waste management, pollution, encroachment of roads/footpaths/public properties, etc,” Anirudhan said.
Sharing his views on the previous budget, Anirudhan said, “There’s no visible progress from the last budget and its promises. Nothing has improved over the last year.”
Mukunda said electricity transformers are nearly 30 years old, and budget allocations are made to replace them, along with old water and sewage pipelines.
All the experts opposed huge budget allocations for elite projects, like the twin tunnel road project which was allocated a mind-boggling Rs 40,000 crore in the previous budget, and demanded that the same be pumped to fund public transport so that 70 per cent of the city’s population commutes on it.
Kathyayini Chamaraj, executive trustee of CIVIC-Bangalore, said this budget should be more inclusive and demanded that disproportionate spending on projects like tunnel roads be diverted to meet the basic rights of citizens -- health and education. She said such funds should be used to improve public transport, reduce Metro fares and expedite Suburban Rail. “Can the 34-km fully underground Inner Ring Metro project, a sustainable way of decongesting the city’s core, which has been shelved for no good reason, be revived?” Kathyayini questioned.
Recalling the bulldozing of homes in Kogilu and Thanisandra, she demanded that the budget be more inclusive and prioritise the needs of the marginalised with more allocations for affordable housing.