Bengaluru’s wish list for New Year: Will it be fruitful or is it just wishful thinking?

From the recent votegate scandal and the IT city earning the lowest score in India’s largest cleanliness survey to the floods that wreaked havoc in most parts of Bengaluru and the poor condition of roads, BBMP has let down Bengaluru on most occasions in 2022.

Even though Bengaluru’s popularity as the most desired city to live and work is growing by leaps and bounds, public infrastructure is below par.

While BBMP has a big plan for the city, experts want the authorities to first fix three key issues — citizen participation, accountability and transparency — in the New Year.

Going by the allocations, funds do not seem to be a problem for the civic body. The government alone has sanctioned close to Rs 8,000 crore, which is expected to be spent in 2022-23. Besides Rs 260 crore from the Centre, BBMP earns close to Rs 5,000 crore from its own resources.

Citizen participation

Srikanth Narasimhan, co-founder and general secretary of Bengaluru NavaNirmana Party (BNP), says ordinary citizens do not have a say in how the money is spent.

“It is not enough to get token inputs from citizens for the budget. The BBMP should mandate that nodal officers in all 243 wards have 2 to 3 sittings with residents in their areas and create a list of all projects that citizens need and not what is required by politicians,” he says. “Based on this, each nodal officer should submit the proposal containing a list of proposed projects for that ward to BBMP, which should be approved. This will be truly a grounds-up, citizen-consultative and democratic budgeting process.”

“This can be achieved by empowering ward committees,” Srinivas Alavilli of Janaagraha, a not-for-profit, adds.

“After the BBMP election, the civic body must call for applications from citizens to become ward committee members. One option to select members is to use the lottery method system.”

Urbanist Ashwin Mahesh says as per the Constitution and the law, cities should be able to set their own course for development and to govern themselves.

“The most important thing for this is that the state government should devolve power to BBMP and other cities. Until that happens, in its effort to run all cities, the state will end up doing a poor job of running even one,” he adds.

Accountability

Unlike in the private sector, there are few instances in BBMP where an engineer has lost his job for not completing the project on time or doing shoddy work.

Experts also want the BBMP to compulsorily include a minimum of 3-5 years of defect liability period for every project, so that the civic body does not have to asphalt the same roads every year.

“Every project to be executed should go through proper tendering. Specifically, the agreement with contractors should have an annual maintenance contract (AMC) built into it, with warranties for at least five years. This will ensure that the projects are executed properly on the ground and will last longer,” said Narasimhan, who founded the political party after steering Bangalore Apartments’ Federation for many years.

Sharath S R of Bangalore Political Action Committee (B.PAC) hoped the BBMP would focus on timely completion of ongoing works. “There are many historically-stuck infrastructure projects such as Ejipura flyover, Hebbal decongestion plan and Sarakki flyover. These should be completed within realistic timelines,” he said.

Transparency

Perhaps for the first time, BBMP — known for hiding information on public projects — has opened its door by sharing details of works worth Rs 6,850 crore on its website. The breakdown of works at constituency and ward level can help citizens keep track of the work and flag issues, if any. The BBMP is yet to share works identified under the Rs 1,500-crore grant for remodelling of rajakaluves.

Narasimhan termed transparency an important first step towards good governance and a necessity to build a world-class city.

“All approved projects in each ward should be displayed on a public website, along with a live update on where each project stands - whether a work order has been issued, whether work has started when it is expected to complete etc. In addition, details of the value of the project, details of the contractor, etc. should be displayed,” he said.