Civic amenities: City worse than many others

The study of 15 cities in the State conducted by Samuel Paul, Kala S Sridhar, A Venugopal Reddy and Pavan Srinath found that while 83 pc of homes in Belgaum and 73 pc in Mysore are covered by the door-to-door garbage collection, it is just 40 pc in Bangalore, the Capital.

Three cities were found to have more public toilets per slum than those in Bangalore. The study points out that according to official statistics parks outnumber public toilets in Bangalore. The Capital also lagged behind other cities in respect of water connections and property tax recovery. Thus, while Bangalore rakes in more than half the moolah generated by all cities, smaller cities have done much better in terms of civic amenities.

But there are silver linings too. The City fares better when it comes to public transport - with 72 buses per lakh population, followed by Mysore, Hubli-Dharwad and Mangalore.

The study also raises questions on the government’s policies on removing the regional imbalances. The study report notes that  if the smaller cities were not properly developed, larger cities like Bangalore become overcrowded, unlivable and unmanageable.