A once-beautiful city, known for its tree-lined avenues and quality of life is now burdened by a fast-growing population, badly-planned infrastructure and a politician-realtor tie up that sees one announcement after another but little progress on how to improve the appalling state of Bengaluru's pitted and cratered roads, its hour long traffic gridlocks and inefficient garbage disposal.
This week, three of Bengaluru's smartest minds - theatre and film personality Prakash Belawadi, comic genius with a pen dipped in satire, Ajit Saldanha, and the sharp and perceptive entrepreneur Priya Chetty Rajagopal tear into the government's proposal to build a steel flyover from Basaveshwara circle to Hebbal and the Outer Ring Road.
Read: The chat room: 'Why let this monster chomp our trees'
One of the weirdest challenges I have been getting to our protest against the proposed steel flyover project, from both the genuinely unsure and complicit sure, is: "You don't know anything about it."
Yes, I must admit that's true to a great extent, and it bothers me. But what really terrifies me is the feeling that the Siddarmaiah government itself and Bangalore Develop ment Authority (BDA), which is in charge of the scheme, also are equally clueless. Citizens should know that BDA has been returning RTI applications with the answer that it hasn't worked out the details of the project yet.
And yet, the Siddaramaiah Cabinet is pushing this through with great haste; presumably and only in favour of the frustrated drivers and commuters perpetually stalled on road stretch between Hebbal flyover and Basaveshwara Circle, near Vidhana Soudha.
Whether this was done with due diligence and process is a question now in front of the Karnataka High Court, posed in a public interest litigation filed by the Namma Bengaluru Foundation. But there are many other questions.
If the wise guys who surreptitiously support the government on this steel flyover scheme will bear with a person who doesn't know what it is all about, is unsure and suspicious too, let me ask a few questions. Firstly, let us agree that the said stretch is indeed a mess, the jams are a nightmare, like at many spots elsewhere in Bengaluru, and we need a way out, as punny as that sounds. But is the steel flyover the answer? If so, says who? Where are the details of the argument in favour of it? Who vetted it? What are the credentials of those worthies, if you could please tell?
Read: Tears of Steel
The road up north from Vidhana Soudha to Hebbal is the only link to the airport and parts north of the flyover. Why can't government think of completing the semi-circle formed by NICE road on south and west right around to north and east? That would link the airport from the east and west? It should reduce the load on the existing much-offending stretch, significantly.
The completed circle should be able to take trucks out of the city. I don't know if this a good idea, but it seems obvious to me. Does the government think it's bad? Why? Anyone has done a cost-benefit analysis? I hope that's not a part of the Official Secrets Act.
And, similarly, experts have worked out a 'namma railu' plan (check Praja); some keep wondering why a Namma Metro Reach to the airport is not an option; and why can't we simply fix the two or three bottlenecks in the stretch - with steel, if you wish, at cost under Rs 100 crore - rather than do it for the full 6.7 km?
At the very least, call for a public hearing and clear our doubts. If not, we must suspect the worst.
The writer is an actor and a social activist
