The state has not seen a Chief Minister elected from the city for some time. And so Bengaluru continues to be treated like a cash cow and does not get the nurturing it deserves.
The problem is that we have many parastatal organisations reporting to the Chief Minister instead of the Mayor, and this makes him far removed from its political compulsions.
It's time the state devolved more powers and funds to the Mayor of the city and ended the one-year musical chair game for the post by giving him or her a term of at least five years.
Also, the Bengaluru Development Authority and the Bengaluru Water Supply and Sewerage Board must be made subordinate to the BBMP and the Metropolitan Planning Committee given more responsibility instead of remaining the rubber stamp it has become.
All that should be announced in the state budget should be that some “x” amount has been allocated for so and so department and the intricacies and final budgeting for the city should be planned and executed by the BBMP itself. This rejig is important.
Besides this, the BBMP should become more adept and competent at managing its funds. Even today there are lakhs of properties that are not paying property tax and thousands of establishments that are not paying a trade license fee in the city. Collecting revenue and keeping accounts updated is a huge problem with the BBMP, which needs to be addressed.
Coming to the budget itself, the demands of Bengalureans have not been fully met. Not much has been allocated for cleaning its polluted lakes or improving its infrastructure and nor has a comprehensive mobility plan been spelt out for the city.
The suburban rail project has been given a mere Rs 325 crore and the Metro Rail, with a much lesser capacity, has walked away with the lion's share of funds.
This despite the fact that a RITES report had asked for Rs 8,000 crores to kick- start the suburban rail project, which can handle ten times the number of passengers that Namma Metro can.
There is no doubt that the city urgently needs a comprehensive mobility plan as the addition of a mere 3000 buses without scientific route reorganisation is not likely to help it in the long run. The government should have used the insights from the BDA's RMP origin destination studies and prioritised route modernisation for the BMTC.
The people’s demands for 6000 more buses and halving the bus rates have not been met either, although everyone is aware that travelling by bus in Bengaluru is far more expensive than anywhere else in the country.
While the Bellandur and Varthur lakes get a mention, the allocation of a meagre Rs 42 crore is woefully low for our lakes choking with contamination. This needs to be looked into at the earliest. As of now tenders have only been floated for aerators and de-weeding of the two lakes.
We could pay dearly for the haphazard use of the city’s groundwater reserves and for ignoring its lakes, which could help it solve its perennial water shortage.
All in all, this budget has been driven by bad economics instead of good governance, which has been given the go-by in preference for a plethora of disjointed populist measures.
The writer is CEO, Namma Bengaluru Foundation.
