Bengaluru in a planning conundrum again

Two bodies, GBA and BDA, have been mandated to plan Bengaluru. What should be done to ensure continuity and harmony between the two plans?

Bengaluru: Bengaluru has been built and rebuilt for years, and the current development baseline is the Revised Master Plan (RMP) 2015, released in 2007, though planning for it began much earlier. Thus, the basis for the city's development is at least two decades old. 

The draft of the next master plan, RMP 2031, was notified in 2020, but the government scrapped it due to procedural issues, including a lack of citizen consultation and court cases, and, above all, shifting political and administrative priorities. The process of dividing the city began, which is now complete. 

Recently, the state government has raised the issue of master plans again, with the Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) planning the core area and the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) preparing plans for the doughnut-shaped area around the GBA.

However, is it in the right direction? 

“How is it in the right direction?” Asks Vijayan Menon, founder of Citizen Action Forum. “We have tried everything in Bengaluru, including BDA planning, state government planning. But we refuse to start planning as per the constitution, which is municipal planning. GBA is not a municipality; it is a state government body. GBA has no municipal members. Just five mayors with the chief minister in charge,” Vijayan says. 

“The fifth state finance commission does not recognise the GBA as a municipality. They will not even give them funds. Funds will go to the five corporations and not to the GBA. So where will they get funding?” he asks.

“There are many confusions as well. The GBA Act states that GBA is a planning authority, but the MPC will prepare a draft plan. We have challenged this particular aspect of planning in court,” he says.

‘Ground-up planning required’

“The constitution requires that city planning be conducted by the MPC. Corporations can be five, but there can be one MPC. It will include the five mayors and elected representatives, and the MPC is authorised to bring in any number of experts from anywhere. What is stopping it?” Vijayan asks. 

“So, it will become a locally elected body with the expertise to do the planning, and we are closer to the MPC. Citizens are closer to our elected representatives than to the bureaucracy or the state government,” he adds.

“GBA planning cannot be centralised. It should be a ground-up planning. If it is not a municipal planning effort, it will not come from the grassroots. It will be like just a few administrators sitting up there and deciding what should be done for Bengaluru. We have tried that model many times. It doesn't work. The mess that Bengaluru is in is because of that,” says Vijayan.

He argues that although five mayors are part of GBA, they constitute a minuscule minority given that the body has 75 members.

Delays in planning Bengaluru and various court hurdles have left the city’s planning in a lurch. The currently operational plan, Revised Master Plan 2015, was released in 2007. “This is extremely stupid. And that's how things like the tunnel road, etc., are coming in without any master plan,” observes Vijayan.

“It is the state government wanting to have control and do anything that they want without a master plan or citizen consultations. We have tried talking to them. Their answer is, “go to court if you want”. This is pretty much the same across all the parties; they all want to control Bengaluru,” says Vijayan. 

“The 74th Amendment and the MPC both concern the devolution of power. Planning is just one aspect. The devolution of powers results in a Centre, a state, and a municipalityeach devolving power to the next level. No political party, no MP, no MLA wants to devolve their power and control over Bengaluru, which is the golden egg. In Karnataka, only one place generates revenue: Bengaluru. That’s all there is to it,” Vijayan quips.

Current developments are moving governance towards greater centralisation and away from the 74th Amendment, says Vijayan, pointing out that to gain support from activists, the government must make the right moves.

“We will not say that we want an idealistic, absolute solution overnight, but move it in the right direction, and then we will support that action from a practical standpoint. We will protest, but we will still support it. However, what is happening now is unacceptable. This is just a murder of the constitution,” he argues.

Challenges to GBA planning

When the government starts planning, a major issue will be in harmonising various plans. "The GBA is a continuous area. But the BDA planning area is now shaped like a doughnut. This is quite unique in the context of planning challenger," says Ravichandar V, a member of the Brand Bengaluru Committee who was instrumental in restructuring Bengaluru into five corporations.

“GBA planning is not a problem. They need to do ground-up planning through corporations as required by the 74th Amendment. However, it needs to be synchronised with the planning in the BDA area, which extends around the GBA along its complete outer boundary. The question is, what will be the mechanism to harmonise the two plans?” he asks. 

Another point he makes is that a larger share of Bengaluru's problems lies in the outer peripheries. “Just outside the boundaries of the GBA area, is where the maximum mess is with a mix of gram panchayats, zilla parishads, CMCs, TMCs and unregulated building permissions. The outer periphery requires a different kind of attention compared to the GBA area. It is a new, unique challenge we have not encountered before. There needs to be clarity on how this will be resolved,” he feels.

Under the MPC and planning rules, the GBA plan must be a joint plan of the five corporations that form the larger, integrated plan. 

So GBA has two challenges here. That is, one is to harmonise the plans of the five individual corporations underlying it and to harmonise this plan with the plans for the periphery, which is under the jurisdiction of BDA, the planning authority.

Case for dynamic planning

The second, larger issue is the planning framework itself, feels Ravichandar.

“Are we going to stick with the old master plan approach? What we really need more of is what I would call a strategic spatial planning framework,” he says.

“Land use and development regulations will be the mechanism by which you will control the end outcomes. But we need a dynamic plan. We cannot sit and say, "I have now planned for the next 15 years, and there is nothing to be done." There needs to be some kind of a rolling plan which needs to be updated every one or two years, in my view,” he adds.

“The best approach is to have guiding principles under which the plan is made, and they guide the plan. Are we ready to make that shift to a strategic spatial framework? By making it dynamic and updateable, you can deal with them better,” he explains.

Ravichandar said the Brand Bengaluru committee has been asked to recommend new areas for inclusion in the GBA's jurisdiction. The related reports and notifications will take longer to process after the government accepts the suggestions. This process can be another hurdle in harmonising the plans and notifying them, because the jurisdiction will change. 

Ravichandar says the logical sequence can be this 

1) GBA plans the existing area falling under five corporations as a ground-up exercise.

2) The government approves the new GBA area, which will be a multi-governance structure consisting of the 5 corporations, CMCs, TMCs, Zilla parishads, and  Gram panchayats

3) GBA then plans the extra area, which is its current peripheral areas

4) BDA gets new areas in its jurisdiction and takes up its planning.

BDA to get additional area?

The question many activists ask is, what is the role of the BDA if the GBA is going to be expanded?

The answer seems simple: Expand BDA further to include newer areas.

"Since the area under BDA has shrunk, we have asked for additional area from the developing areas from the outskirts of Bengaluru to be added to the BDA jurisdiction. Rural parts of Bengaluru can be added to BDA as they all are fast-expanding and need planning," says N A Haris, chairman of Bengaluru Development Authority. He adds that the BDA is awaiting clarification from the state government, and the idea has found support at various levels. 

"As a Bengalurean, I feel the planning process should be handled by one body, be it GBA or BDA, to ensure coherence. But at the government level, it has been decided to divide the process between the two. We have to go by it," he says. 

The government has not yet set a timeline for completing the master planning process. But Harris hopes that, once the process starts, there will be coordination meetings with the GBA to ensure continuity and coherence in planning.

DH reached out to GBA officials to clarify whether any coordination is underway between the BDA and the GBA on master planning. Sources said it is too early to comment, while officials did not respond to the queries.