Budget: BBMP's road to nowhere

Riding high on the magnanimity of the State government which has proposed to allocate Rs 4,222 crore for Namma Bengaluru, a brave new Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), which was so close to getting disbanded, has pegged its expenditure at Rs 8,999 crore in the 2016-17 budget. This puts the onus on the Palike to generate nearly Rs 4,764 crore on its own. A big chunk, Rs 2,445 crore, is expected through various taxes.

The civic body expects to add an additional Rs 600 crore to its coffers through the revised property taxes, 20% for residential and 25% for non-residential properties, which will come into effect from April 1. The much touted optical fibre cable policy has failed to live up to the expectations. This time around, it is expected to generate Rs 407 crore, down from the euphoria of 2014 when the Palike expected Rs 750 crore. Another major source of income is from advertisements, where illegal hoardings are a menace and have been consistently eating into the Palike’s revenues. Here, the BBMP also suffers from an ancient malady, corruption. When honest officers crackdown on such malpractices, they are shown the door. The Palike is now left with solid waste management cess, trade licence and revenue from the town planning department, clearly mirroring its inability to not only mop up funds but also to function without grants from both the Centre and state. Such dependance on government grants is definitely not a healthy trend.

Bengaluru was earlier known for its salubrious weather and cosmopolitan culture, then for its IT industry and now for its traffic and garbage. The Palike has neither shown any vision nor the desire to tackle chronic problems which, as all chronic problems do, end in a disaster if not addressed. There is little mention on combating a notorious crisis which turned ‘Garden City’ into ‘Ga-rbage City’, except for a proposed legislation to make mandatory composting of wet waste generated from even 60x40 sites. Coming to traffic, if flyovers and grade separators were enough, then Bengaluru has plenty of them, but still the problem persists. Even here, what the Palike has promised is already included in the state budget. White topping of important roads, developing roads in commercial areas under TenderSURE model, development of important IT-BT areas, including Whitefield, multi-level car parking at important places; all these have been announced by the chief minister. So what’s new? While some projects have been in the pipeline for several years, other works now underway are way past their deadlines. The high drama that unfolded in the run-up to the 2015 BBMP polls, the dismal voter turnout, the subsequent political opportunism and then this budget, Bengaluru could do better.