BENGALURU: For over seven months now, Nehru Road in Kammanahalli has been closed for construction — dug up, barricaded, and left incomplete. What was once a stretch filled with shoppers, food stalls, and daily commuters is now deserted.
The ongoing work has deeply impacted the livelihoods of small business owners in the area. With no vehicular access and reduced footfall, several shopkeepers say their daily income has dropped to a fraction of what it used to be.
“Our business is dead,” says Vishnuram, who has been running a small store in the area for the past 20 years. “Customers today care only about safety. If they can’t drive up to the shop, they won’t come. Earlier there was life here, now it’s just silence. Even if the road gets cleared, it’ll take at least two years for business to pick up again.”
“We used to make Rs 10,000 a day, now we’re barely making Rs 2,000. Rent and staff salaries have become difficult,” shared Ameen, a shopkeeper in the vicinity.
Asked about the delay, BBMP officials pointed to coordination issues with BWSSB. “The delay was because BWSSB hadn’t given us the No-Objection Certificate (NOC) to start white-topping.
They were still completing utility work — laying sewer and water lines, and giving connections to houses. BBMP cannot begin white-topping until BWSSB completes its works. We received the NOC only in July and began work soon after. In the last 20 days, we’ve completed around 400 metre of white-topping,” a BBMP official said.