Urban Ooru

Picking off from where we left off, the State Government recently introduced “The Greater Bengaluru Governance Bill, 2024” in the Legislative Assembly on 22 nd July 2024. As per the bill, it intends to “(i). Establish the Greater Bengaluru Authority for coordinating and supervising the development of the Greater Bengaluru Area; (ii). Establish not more than ten City Corporations in the Greater Bengaluru Area for effective, participatory and responsive governance: (iii). Empower Ward Committees to become basic units of urban governance and facilitate community participation; (iv). Integrate and streamline political accountability of all public authorities delivering services in the Greater Bengaluru Authority; (v). Improve the quality of life of all citizens by instituting a decentralised, participative, efficient and equitable governance framework for Bengaluru; and (vi). Provide for matters incidental thereto.” The bill envisages a civic organisation with: 1.       Greater Bengal

When something goes wrong in a neighbourhood, who does one call? Who is that elected people’s representative that one goes to? Most of us may think of the local MLA or MP. Rarely do we think of the Councillor or as we call it, the Corporator. In 1992, the Parliament enacted the 73 rd (Panchayati Raj) and the 74 th (Urban Local Bodies) Constitutional Amendment. This enabled the devolution of powers from the state governments to local governments. The intent of this was to ensure that functions like building and maintenance of roads, health, water and electricity supply would be the responsibility of the local government. This meant that citizens could voice their needs to their elected representative for effective provision of services. While it is by many measures insufficient, the 12 th Schedule of the 74 th Amendment outlines the 18 functions that Urban Local Body (ULB) needs to carry out. However, in many states including Karnataka, even these responsibilities have not been fu

Let’s start at the beginning. We purchased our plot around 25 years ago. It’s located in a little enclave of 2 streets. This enclave of about 2 acres was close to a large upcoming suburb in Bengaluru hemmed in by a large tract of litigated land on one side and a much larger tract of defence land on the other. This meant that we had no paved road to our place. There was just a mud track that would disappear in the rains when we would skid and slide on our motorbikes – not a very nice experience. As the land was litigated, we did not have a water and sewerage connection. Luckily, we got the electricity connection through the transformer in the wooded army land. For water, each plot drilled its own borewell and for the sewerage we built our own septic tanks. The land had another complication with a small storm water drain on its west and south sides. This later became the receptacle for our sewage. Much to our dismay, we found that this drain would get blocked downstream much farthe

I step out onto the street. There are no pavements. Actually, the road hardly exists now. The BWSSB has dug up our road for the 5 th  time trying to the get the sewerage right this time. And prior to that, they were trying to get the water supply right. And prior to that? Oh well, they were laying the sewerage, only that the contractor wouldn’t listen when a few of us (architects residing in the area) told him that he was laying it much higher than what he should have done. Prior to that? They laid the sewer lines for the first time. Got us to close our well-functioning septic tanks to connect our building sewerage to the spanking new sewer line. Great work, you would think, just that they had no sewage treatment plant in the area. So, they connected it to the storm water drain by the side of our building. And prior to that, they had laid the water lines for the first time. Now, let’s talk about the electricity! A few months ago, they installed a new transformer. The contractor did not