Urbanised villages left out of GBA, residents decry neglect

Governance Gap

Bengaluru: Narrow roads dotted with apartment complexes have become a common sight in many urbanised villages on the outskirts of Bengaluru, as more people move to these areas owing to affordability and proximity to tech hubs.

As a result of such rapid urbanisation, many interior roads have become dumpyards for waste, villagers are experiencing traffic snarls, roads are pothole-ridden, and groundwater levels are fast sinking.

The residents of these villages, who have been silently bearing the brunt of rapid urbanisation, were hoping that the government would bring them under the Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA), as the gram panchayats are struggling to keep up with the rate of growth in these areas.

Though there were discussions that close to 25 urbanised villages would be brought under the GBA, the government’s decision to consider only areas under the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) for the GBA has left these residents disappointed.

“This is no longer a village. In just the last ten years, people have moved in and a city atmosphere has set in. However, the gram panchayat continues to work in the same old manner, with no proper waste management. As a result, people tend to throw garbage on the roadside, creating many blackspots,” said Shivaram, a resident of Attibele, on the south-eastern outskirts of Bengaluru.

Many others also alleged that BBMP vans unload garbage onto village roads as they are close by and there is hardly any vigilance.

That apart, silent village roads are now seeing huge traffic owing to such developments, and there is hardly any streamlining, villagers said.

“Evenings are bad. We have never had to wait in a jam to reach our homes. But now, slowly, traffic is picking up near the village entrance,” said Abhilash Kumar, a resident of Bagalur village, on the northern outskirts of Bengaluru.

A senior official from the Bengaluru Traffic Police, which also covers many of these areas, said that the large apartment complexes are the problem.

“Apartment complexes mean a large number of vehicles in a small area, and in many of these places the roads are narrow and not made to handle this kind of vehicle density. Hence, the traffic snarls,” the official said.

Pothole-ridden roads have also been a problem owing to increased vehicular movement. The roads in the industrial areas of Bommasandra and Jigani have remained in poor condition for years.

“Thousands of us work in these industrial areas, and the connectivity is still poor,” said Joseph, a worker from a chemical factory in Bommasandra.

Overexploitation of groundwater and pollution of lakes, owing to the discharge of sewage from apartment complexes that have come up without the necessary permissions, is yet another problem, residents from many of the villages pointed out.

Bengaluru Urban DC G Jagadeesha, who acknowledged that there were problems in these areas owing to the growth, said that the gram panchayats were trying to do their best.

“We have to acknowledge that these gram panchayats do not have expertise in handling solid waste like the BBMP. Hence, waste management has been a problem in many areas where the population has increased drastically,” he said.

Many apartments are also not installing Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs) according to norms, polluting the environment, and this has been flagged to the concerned authorities, he added.

While people had pinned their hopes on the government to bring them into the GBA limits, senior officials from the Urban Development Department also opined that such an addition of new villages to the GBA limits would have helped streamline growth in those areas.

“A bigger planning authority would have definitely helped ease the situation,” a senior official from the department said.

However, many political leaders have maintained that the addition of villages might not happen now but may take some time, and this has yet again triggered some hope among the residents. Many MLAs are also said to be lobbying to get villages under their constituencies into the GBA.