Bengaluru Action Plan: How will BBMP drum up the money?

The BBMP budget has a fiscal outlay of Rs 10,688 crore. If you’re hoping for a commute on Bengaluru roads that doesn’t include piles of garbage, lethal potholes or overflowing sewage, don’t hold your breath. Or, do. With mammoth allocations for recurring projets like white-topping and pavements lie forgotten. The city will get air purifiers, while depleting green cover and polluted lakes are problems for another day. However, the civic body has promised free WiFi hotspots in 400 public spaces, free bus passes for transgenders and medical waivers for the poor.

TAs the city deals with a plethora of civic issues, - potholed roads and garbage on the streets – being chief among them, the BBMP’s budget presented on Monday, has little new to offer the people.

The opposition in the BBMP council is calling the budget old wine in a new bottle, pointing out that it was during the tenure of former Mayor Sampath Raj that Rs 5 lakh was announced for the first girl child born on January 1 in a BBMP maternity hospital and a similar announcement has now been made in the current budget, which has offered Rs 1 lakh  to all baby girls born on January 1.

City civic activist, Srinivas Alavalli of Citizens for Bengaluru, says there is too much emphasis on social welfare schemes this year with the Lok Sabha election approaching.

“The focus on education is welcome, but ten thousand crore is not good enough for a city like Bengaluru. The state government is doing the city a disservice by giving it random grants instead of evolving a revenue sharing formula consistent across all urban bodies,” he says.

Mr Alavalli also finds the funds allocated for lakes extremely disappointing.

“Lakes have been given only Rs 345 crore. At this rate it will take a 100 years to revive them! Why can’t more money be given to this work, which actually generates employment and makes our city better in many ways?” he asks.

 “And while roads have got so many thousands of crores for white topping and maintenance, where is the money for footpaths? Are we making Bengaluru into a city only for the cars and two wheelers?” he adds indignantly

Strongly suggesting that each ward should make its own budget using the ward committees, he regrets that in the absence of such an arrangement,  small amounts are allotted to the wards while “white elephants”  like white topping get thousands of crores.