Bengaluru happened. With the main water source over a 100 kilometres away, it was never meant to be this bustling a megapolis under serious stress with over 10 million population fuelled by the largest decadal growth of 48 per cent between 2001 and 2011. Trading outpost, military cantonment, pensioner’s paradise, garden city, India’s Silicon valley, garbage city, foaming lakes - all applicable monikers at different points of time. This snapshot of Bengaluru by Indian Institute of Science and Centre for Ecological Sciences captures the environmental havoc caused by the super charged growth of the last two decades.

Managing Bengaluru during a rapid growth phase would have tested the best and brightest leaders and administrators working under a strong institutional structure. In its absence, Bengaluru has encountered the ‘perfect storm’ despite being in a landlocked environment. Three data points are indicative of the urban stress that Bengaluru is facing. Firstly, there is Zipf’s law which suggests a rank-size rule that expects the largest urban centre to be twice as large as the second largest urban centre, thrice as large as the third-largest urban centre and so on. Mysuru, the next largest urban centre in Karnataka, is just a tenth of Bengaluru’s population. During the period between 1991 and 2011, out of every 10 persons added to an urban centre in Karnataka, Bengaluru got 2.4 persons in 1991-2001 and 5.7 during 2001-2011. A study by WRI India showed that in the last six years between 2011 and 2017, Bengaluru city ground-level built-up area has grown by 13 sq km per year on a base of 712 sq km.

Today, it is difficult to say which the centre of the city is. Half of Bengaluru lives outside the Outer Ring Road (ORR) and the growth there is over 3 to 4 per cent per year, while core Bengaluru (within ORR) is witness to near-stagnant growth rates. The infrastructure provisioning is mainly in the core city while the outside areas languish on roads, water, sewerage, transport and more. By any yardstick, Bengaluru will touch 20 million within the next two decades and the challenge to manage this growth is daunting.

Bengaluru is a global brand among the pantheon of cities across the world. If it is to retain and strengthen its brand equity, it needs to work on being a great live-and-work city and focus on improving the quality of life for all its residents. Currently, the common civic woes cited are traffic gridlock, potholed roads, visible garbage, polluted lakes, health/safety concerns and declining public spaces among others. Despite this, there is an influx of people seeking economic opportunities and over 1,200 private vehicles continue to be purchased every day to add to the current 0.7 per person private vehicle ownership. There is an urgent need to embrace new models to grow the city in a sustainable manner.

What Ails Bengaluru?

Cities across India are vassals of the state government. Bengaluru is no exception. There is an overriding influence of the state manifested through weak, one-year ‘titular’ mayors. Control is exercised by the Corporation Commissioner and the multiple state agencies such as the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board, transport corporations, power corporations and development authorities. These multiple agencies act as fiefdoms and consequently positive citizen outcomes which need inter-agency planning and coordination (think road cutting/restoration or traffic) are impacted.

Citizens have no voice in the current system with farcical ward committees. There is a trust deficit and over half the property tax potential is not realised. Corruption is rampant and rarely is anyone held accountable for the state of the city. Competent urban professionals in the system are rare and there is negligible training for existing staff. The operations and finances of the corporation and other civic agencies are opaque and shrouded in secrecy. The static Master Plan process with its focus on land use and zonal regulations has failed the city. In three decades of master planning, open spaces have declined from 25 per cent to 4 per cent.

Solutions Since 2000

During 2000-04, the Bangalore Agenda Task Force (BATF) was set up by the Chief Minister. BATF took the route of half yearly accountability summits and working with seven government agencies on specific city projects including property tax, infrastructure, waste management, Geographic Indication System and public toilets among others. In 2008, the Kasturirangan Committee report for Bengaluru’s governance was tabled. It recommended setting up of the Metropolitan Planning Committee (MPC) as set out in the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act (CAA), a directly elected mayor and more citizen participation. Agenda for Bangalore Development (ABIDe) was set up during 2008-13 which made suggestions through a Plan Bengaluru 2020 and introduced direction-oriented buses. In 2014, the state government set up a three-member expert committee to restructure the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) in an effort to fix Bengaluru’s governance and administration. One non-governmental effort in Bengaluru through Bangalore City Connect during 2007-16 resulted in new-age city roads (Tender SURE) built around the pedestrian and life cycle cost principles (Disclosure: the author was a member of BATF, BBMP Restructuring and Bangalore City Connect).

Bengaluru’s Governance And Administration Reimagined

The BBMP Restructuring Committee recommendations (www.bbmprestructuring.org) through 10 reports are reasonably exhaustive about the way forward. The mandate was setting out the ‘scaffolding’ needed for building the Bengaluru of the future. Done right, it will address the woes of traffic, garbage, water, lakes, pollution, roads, flooding, safety, health and education, and grow the work economy in an inclusive manner.

To fix Bengaluru, we need to reform the city corporation, BBMP, and look at the overall landscape which includes myriad other agencies tasked with planning, transport, water, sewerage, lakes, traffic, safety, roads and power among others. We need an appropriate mix of decentralisation and integration. And any solution needs to be consistent with the spirit of the 74th CAA.

The future of Indian cities lies in a city-region framework across the entire state. Each region should ideally have an anchor city and three to four nodal towns with high connectivity, which function as ‘live and work’ economies. To make Bengaluru (712 sq km) work, the 8,000 sq km Bengaluru Metropolitan Region is suggested as the ‘chowkidar’ and be the MPC as mandated by the CAA.

At the Bengaluru city level, a three-tier framework is suggested. At the apex level, it has the Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) which is the integrator across the City Corporation and the multiple civic agencies. They would be tasked with planning for the city and coordinating actions across agencies for desired outcomes. City scale activities such as transport would be anchored here. A directly elected mayor (five-year term limit) would head the GBA in due course with the Chief Minister being in charge initially. The CM as head was suggested initially since there are a host of legacy challenges created through setting up 'para-statal' agencies in the city as state instruments, which need to be resolved in terms of respecting the GBA as the ultimate city authority. Once done, a directly elected mayor will have the necessary authority to run the GBA and can be held accountable.

At the mid-tier, five corporations, with two administrative zones each, is suggested. This is part of the political and administrative decentralisation needed. The current BBMP is too large and unwieldy to be managed as a single entity. With multiple corporations, corporators will be closer to their constituents and local issues can be raised and resolved in smaller units. The Mayor in Council would head these corporations and be supported by a Commissioner as chief executive. This is distinctly different from the current system which is effectively run by a single commissioner.

At the third tier lies ward governance reforms for deep decentralisation and citizen participation. An innovative 20-member ward committee structure has been set out - 10 political representatives through proportional representation (every 10 per cent vote share in the corporation ward election gets a representative seat) and 10 from resident welfare associations (RWAs), vulnerable groups and non-governmental organisations with applicable quota rules. The current system of veto power with the Corporator needs to go.

A city finance commission would ensure parity among the different corporations based on their own resources and needs. A city services ombudsman would address citizen grievances by way of directing the respective civic agencies. Currently, Bengaluru is governed by Karnataka Municipal Act, which is also applicable for a three-lakh city such as Tumakuru. We need a separate act for a mega city like Bengaluru and a detailed draft bill based on the above framework is ready for consideration. The committee also put out recommendations for updated cadre and recruitment rules for BBMP, a strategic planning framework to replace the current Master Plan approach, a municipalisation committee for proactive fixing of urban villages on the outskirts, setting up a spatial information centre and methods for innovative land procurement for public purposes on a win-win basis.

So, what’s holding up fixing Bengaluru’s governance and administration?

In one word, politics. The way this set of detailed, nuanced recommendations has played out as expected in our Twitter era, is described in a simplistic summary as follows: