‘Citizen choices matter in B'luru, not who is in power

NT Correspondent 

Bengaluru: Bengaluru suffers from major gaps in urban planning, evidenced every day in traffic jams, poor roads, flooding in every storm, lack of housing for the poor and many other such symptoms.

Master plans we have seen so far for Bengaluru have been highly technical documents without clarity on the foundation of an idealistic vision. How should we imagine Bengaluru as a city? How can a plan for Bengaluru inclusively recognise its diversity? Should we envisage Bengaluru as a unitary or a complex entity? A panel comprising Tara Krishnaswamy, co-founder, Citizens for Bengaluru, Mathew Idiculla, legal consultant and visiting faculty at Azim Premji University and Anjali Karol Mohan, urban and regional planner debated these questions, seeking to articulate the framework of a vision that should underpin the planning of Bengaluru at an event at the Bengaluru International Centre (BIC).

Mathew Idiculla said that planning laws in India continue to be heavily influenced by what was laid down by the British colonial system. “The regime had specific objectives of planning; it was kept away from democratic legitimacy.

There were town planning boards created so that municipal corporations were kept out of the process. The system continues to work in that paradigm. There are proposals made for change but have not come through,” he said. Anjali Karol Mohan noted that a master plan must judiciously incorporate the opinions of all.

“You can have a series of development plans that can be executed at shorter periods of time or a master plan that is all encompassing. This is not suitable at the moment. We need a forum that will begin to strategise,” she added.

Tara Krishnaswamy noted that in the Western Europe as well as the USA, there is an ongoing system of polling and surveys to find out what the citizens choose and prefer, regardless of who is in power or whether the elections are being conducted.

“There is a sense of common value. We have multiple imaginations while it is the state’s job to reconcile. Otherwise, we begin to form congregations around our own social strata – not only economically but very often also including caste and religion. The other forms of citizen input – protests and largescale people’s movement are inadequate,” she said.