Bengaluru: Platform introduced to track progress of city projects

Urban planner Ashwin Mahesh and Bengaluru’s ‘bicycle mayor’ Sathyanarayanan Sankaran have introduced a platform that tracks the progress of the city corporations’ projects, as outlined in their respective budgets. 

Called the City Latte platform, Mahesh and Sankaran took the help of AI to go through the budget speech documents of all corporations and list out their objectives and money allocated for each project. The team then used their sources and connections to gather information on the status of each of the works mentioned. 

In Bangalore South Corporation, for instance, the platform lists ‘Public Works’ as having been allocated a budget of Rs 873 crore. Under this, there are four goals which make up 17.2 % of the budget. They include ‘World Bank-funded stormwater drain development’, costing Rs 440 crore and ‘Streetlight LED conversion’. It does not mention the budget for the latter. Some of the other categories include administration, revenue,
waste management, urban planning, mobility, health, education, animal welfare and lakes.

“This is an easy way to keep track of what is happening in each corporation. Not just for concerned citizens, but even for the commissioners and journalists,” Mahesh says.

He notes that even eight months after the corporations were formed, only half the wards have ward offices. “With platforms like this, it will be easy to hold the officials accountable,” he states.

Look up city-latte.vercel.app