If you track Bengaluru’s growth from the 1970s till date, and view it in terms of the growth of an individual, it would suffice to assume that Bengaluru today has been through childhood to directly get well into adulthood without experiencing adolescence and teenage. The city was once known to be the fastest growing urban centre in the world.
That such a development is not good for its phenomenally growing population, requiring urgent corrective measures, may be a justification for the latest perceived solution — The Greater Bengaluru Governance Bill, 2024. The bill was passed in the Assembly and Council in the recently concluded session, and sent to the Governor for his assent.
But the latter has sent it back to the state government with his opinion that with a bill of such magnitude, the concerns of various civic organisations and stakeholders — which includes its 1.40 crore population — should be addressed before going ahead with it.
The bill — which is expected to be an expensive and tedious administrative affair if implemented after the Governor’s assent — provides for core principles, institutions and processes for effective urban governance in the Greater Bengaluru Area to establish up to seven city corporations in the Greater Bengaluru Area for effective, participatory and responsive governance. Currently, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) is the sole municipal corporation for Bengaluru.
If, or when, the bill becomes an act following the Governor’s assent, the state government, through a notification, will constitute the Greater Bengaluru Authority for the Greater Bengaluru Area that could have up to seven separate municipal corporations under it, each headed by a commissioner, reporting to the chief commissioner, all appointed by the state government.
The ex-officio chairperson of the authority will be the chief minister, the minister in charge of Bengaluru development will be its ex-officio vice-chairperson, and the authority’s chief commissioner will be its ex-officio member secretary. The authority’s ex-officio members will be the ministers representing the legislative constituencies and the mayors of the city corporations in the Greater Bengaluru Area. Each city corporation in the Greater Bengaluru Area will nominate two as ex-officio members.
The other ex-officio members will be all the elected representatives of Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha, State Legislative Assembly and Council whose constituencies are in the Greater Bengaluru Area; commissioner, Bangalore Development Authority (BDA); chairman, Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board(BWSSB); managing directors of Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC), Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL), Bangalore Electricity Supply Company (BESCOM) and Bengaluru Solid Waste Management Limited; deputy commissioners of jurisdictional revenue districts; Bengaluru police commissioner; superintendents of police with jurisdiction in part or full in any of the city corporations in the Greater Bengaluru Area; chief executive officer, Bengaluru Metropolitan Land Transport Authority (BMLTA); the chief town planner and the engineer-in-chief of the Greater Bengaluru Authority; and the director of Karnataka State Fire and Emergency Services.
It is almost the entire gamut of the state government and political machinery linked to Bengaluru that will cap the Greater Bengaluru Authority in an attempt to better administer the Greater Bengaluru Area.
But will Bengaluru’s problems be solved by this? This question arises riding on the experience over the past years of one city corporation failing to cope with a relatively smaller Bengaluru, with lesser problems. In fact, the growing civic issues of Bengaluru were only because the right solutions were either not applied, or applied erroneously. In several cases, it was like a surgeon operating on the foot when the surgery was needed in the brain.
Take the traffic congestion problem. Instead of tightening driving licence rules to ensure that only the most deserving driver/rider candidates get licences, and enforcing traffic rules so stringently that they pose as credible deterrence to violations, the state government is pushing for adding roads, even tunnel roads.
The truth is that existing roads, if properly maintained, are enough for even the increasing number of vehicles — as long as motorists use them in a responsible manner, that includes their own duty of preventing traffic jams. But we are being convinced to blame the roads for the congestion, implying the need for road projects, which all know are money spinners. If the correct solutions fail to be found to address the problems, even ten, twenty or thirty city corporations will fail to make Bengaluru a better place.
The Greater Bengaluru Authority does give hope of effectively bringing the various civic agencies under one umbrella, so that civic works are better coordinated in quicker time while ensuring better quality. But that could have been achieved even with one city corporation by streamlining BBMP and the civic agencies concerned. Blame it on the lack of political will. Now, the bill itself may be the missing political will in disguise.
Optimistically, let’s hope it is. But not before due consultations are earnestly held with various sections of the citizens, civic organisations and a whole slew of experts concerned.
If the Greater Bengaluru Governance Bill 2024 is part of a mission to rid Bengaluru of its current — and increasing — problems, it needs to achieve that goal scientifically, efficiently and apolitically, failing which Namma Bengaluru might end up worse.