Bangalore's road to hell as IT capital goes from garden to garbage city
‘I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose garden’ — Lynn Anderson’s 1970 hit song
Among the many reasons my wife and I left Calcutta some 17 years ago, to move to salubrious Bangalore was the abysmal condition of the roads. Calcutta’s roads, that is. Admittedly not the primary reason, but it helped that we could console ourselves by saying the roads in Bangalore were, by and large, navigable and not pock-marked with crater sized potholes as we had experienced all those years ago in India’s first capital city. In keeping with Fate’s perverse nature, the boot is now firmly on the other foot. Thanks to untrammelled property development, chaotic state of the city’s creaking infrastructure and general apathy of the ministerial powers that be, Bangalore’s roads are in a parlous state. To add insult to injury, on a recent visit to Calcutta, I found the roads there eminently motorable, and driving through the old city’s streets posed no immediate threat to my spinal column. My pals could barely hide their sly grins at my having ‘deserted’ the City of Joy, and I was laughing out of the other side of my mouth.
Not that you need me to tell you this. Bangalore’s pathetic road condition has been headlining the news in all our media channels for some weeks now. To add to the city’s woes, the record rainfall during the month of October did no favours to an already rapidly deteriorating situation. Add a clutch of road accident deaths that occurred as a direct result of the broken roads, and the state government was, and is, faced with a gigantic civic problem with potentially dire political consequences. Not that your average Bangalorean gives a tinker's curse about whether the ruling dispensation will stand or fall as a consequence. Governments may come and go, but the size of our ever growing potholes is matched only by the venal mendacity of those whom we have elected to run our lives. That should properly read ruin our lives.
And how do our elected worthies react when confronted by uncomfortable questions from the citizenry? Why, blame somebody else of course. ‘The private contractors assigned to take care of laying our roads have been making money at the common man’s expense and they will not go unpunished’, fumed one official. Really? Very public spirited of him. Like we didn’t know! ‘This is the highest rainfall recorded in a month for over 115 years. It’s a natural calamity, and we are dealing with it as best we can’. So now it's God’s fault. And of course, every government’s favourite excuse, ‘We inherited this terrible situation from the previous government’s corrupt regime…..blah, blah, blah.’
Your best is simply not good enough, Minister or Mayor or Counsellor, or whoever you are. Illegal buildings collapsing in slow motion (I guess if they’re illegal, they had it coming but loss of innocent lives is unconscionable), lakes foaming up with toxic chemicals and even spectacularly catching fire, unpleasant detritus floating freely on flooded rivers that were once roads, infection and disease a clear and present danger, and the roads are going to get worse before they get better. If they do at all. The officials would like the general public to cut them some slack, in view of all these awful privations. Only, we cut them slack every year, all year round, and nothing to show for it. Not to speak of the punitive road tax that the citizen has to bear. We keep voting state governments out every five years — the anti-incumbency factor, as our friends in the media have so eloquently dubbed it. Many of us are seriously contemplating affixing our thumb impression on NOTA (None Of The Above) when next we queue up at the polling booths. It will give us small comfort, and will at best be a futile gesture of protest.
To cap it all, garbage piled high and deep at many street corners in the city is certainly not a sight for sore eyes. Posters and billboards adorned by pictures of local MLAs and their party cohorts at every street corner is an even more ghastly and ironic symbol of visual pollution. An English friend remarked dryly as we drove at snail's pace through the traffic snarls, ‘Garden city did you say, old chap? Garbage city would be more the mot juste’. It's bad enough to be insulted in polite English, but to add a dash of French is the ultimate kick-in-the-groin. Fortunately, with the car windows up and the air-conditioning going at full blast, our olfactory senses were spared the rancid smells, in addition to the unedifying still life of ugly mounds of putrefying rubbish — an unvarying frieze that is our constant companion as we drive around the city of Cubbon Park and Lal Bagh. And the icing on the cake, many of Bangalore’s once tree lined street pavements are home to squatting hawkers peddling all kinds of wares. My cup of woe runneth over.
So there you have it. Those of us who have put down roots in Bangalore, and have crossed the age where swift decisions to move lock, stock and barrel is no longer a viable option, find ourselves in a quandary. We are too set in our ways and too indolent to pack up and leave at a moment’s notice — involving as that does, change of bank accounts, Aadhaar cards, gas cylinders, internet service providers, milk vendors, the newspaper wallah and my barber. In other words, the whole shooting match. It’s not as if other cities offer better options. Bombay, too filmy. Delhi, too political and bureaucratic. Calcutta, been there done that, and Chennai, close enough to Bangalore without having to live there, and blessed with 12 months of scorching summer — though the fabled sea breeze is salutary, if you’re asthmatic.
Ergo, Bangalore wins out. Warts, potholes and all.
(The author is a brand consultant with an interest in music, cricket humour and satire)
