An Unsafe City

Three deaths, including those of two young girls, purportedly caused by road mishaps in the span of a week in the City, happened because of extraneous causes. Nothing to do with usual traffic woes or road rage, they should be attributed to gross civic negligence towards maintenance of civic infrastructure. The 9th standard school student (Akshaya) was killed while crossing the road in Hebbal. She was forced to cross the busy road because the subway meant for pedestrians had been rendered dysfunctional due to waterlogging. Even more tragic is the fact that she was mowed down by a speeding garbage truck of the BBMP, an agency that ought to have kept the subway clean and useable. In the second instance, a man and his soon-to-be married daughter were killed when a roadside transformer burst splashing burning oil on the passersby. Residents from the nearby areas had complained about the malfunctioning transformer a short while ago. No corrective action was taken.

The two tragedies of unusual nature point to the gross negligence towards maintenance of civic infrastructure which often renders Bengaluru an unsafe city. Most pedestrian subways in the city are shabbily maintained. They are often dark and dank. Vendors encroach good chunk of space while beggars and lepers with their extended suppurating limbs further narrow the passageways. Ill-lit, they easily turn into hubs of vice what with sex workers, eunuchs, louts and touts accosting the users. Dogs and monkeys with easy access to their interiors add to the terrible mess. A heavy downpour can easily turn them into flooded tunnels. Middlemen roam free collecting hafta in connivance with cops who dare not be seen indulging in the illegal collection. Pedestrians avoid taking subways in order to keep away from the obnoxious elements they host, but risk their lives while crossing busy traffic thoroughfare.

As for the deaths caused by the transformer blast, the main blame lies with the poor maintenance of transformers which serve as the last mile connectors for consumers. A C-STEP survey reveals that the Bescom does not have details of the exact number of transformers in the city, let alone effectively monitoring their functionality and metering them. Even those metered, were found to be defective or defunct in a large number of cases. Summers heat up oil within them which is meant to act as a coolant. But unauthorised buildings and attendant connections cause overloading thereby often causing explosions.

All that could be said by way of final analysis is that laxity and inefficient maintenance of civic infrastructure is as much a necessity of the day as setting up and expanding it for the need of a growing city.