Bengaluru: 13 years on, 110 villages under BBMP lack infrastructure

BENGALURU: Thirteen years and two civic elections after they were merged into Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike to become Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike, 110 villages on the outskirts continue to wallow in administrative apathy. That some of these villages are part of high revenue-yielding areas like Mahadevapura, Whitefield and Sarjapur has not helped them get proper roads and basic amenities like bus stands.
“We do not have a single footpath; we are forced to stand on the main roads for buses or cabs,” said Suhas Gupta, a software employee of a private company located on Sarjapur Road.
Three years after these villages joined the city civic body, the first civic polls were held in 2010 and five years later, BBMP got its second elected body. Elections are due now and the government is coming up with various excuses to delay them. Among the reasons cited is the need to increase the number of wards to ensure better administration.
But there seems little hope of things changing on the ground. Debanjani Mukherji, a resident of Thubarahalli, says that for four years now she has only seen the road condition deteriorate. “They only do some bit of pothole filling, but not a single stretch in neatly asphalted. BBMP only keeps giving false hopes,” she added.
Not just Thubarahalli, all 110 villages hardly have footpaths, and if they do, they are filled with hawkers and parked bikes, said Mukherji, adding: “It’s a total failure of the system.”
With the lockdown lifted and things getting back to normal, many software companies located in Whitefield and Mahadevapura have resumed operations.
Techies are getting back to their workplace and are relying on public transport for the same, but poor infrastructure is a big obstacle.
Recently, Whitfield Rising posted a picture of people standing on the footpath and waiting for a bus, prompting Twitter user Chethan Kumar to comment, “...We are not a smart city for 10 years [sic].”
Prajwal Acharya, a software employee working near ITPL, said people don’t even know that a bus stop actually exists at the spot.
“They stand at a common place and the bus actually stops there. We don’t have a proper bus stand. We just stand near a local shop and the buses make a halt. This in turn hinders traffic movement. Nobody monitors things,” said the BTM Layout resident.