It may be India’s tech capital and one of its economic powerhouses but the infrastructure of Bengaluru is in shambles. More proof of this came over the weekend when a sudden torrent of rain in Bengaluru claimed the life of a 22-year-old Infosys staffer after her car was stuck in neck-deep waters at an underpass. The vehicle got stuck after the driver was unable to gauge the water level, likely made worse by poor drainage systems that are endemic to India’s civic infrastructure. Make no mistake, this was a case of administrative apathy that was shown up by sudden inclement weather. In a city where residents often find themselves gridlocked by hours-long traffic snarls and short spells of rain are enough to inundate large neighbourhoods, such failures have unfortunately become the norm and incite weak administrative response. This will simply not do.
Among the many challenges in front of the new government in Karnataka, bolstering the state capital’s infrastructure must rank somewhere near the top. The city contributes a third of the state’s Gross Domestic Product but has often got the short shrift when it comes to development and infrastructure, with policymakers preferring piecemeal and haphazard construction to sober planning. This is part of a larger problem with the policy imagination of urban India, which is seen as a revenue generator but where not enough investment is made for sustainable, long-term, inclusive futures. Bengaluru is merely one of the more acute examples of this phenomenon, where the city’s natural advantages have been mutilated by untrammeled development and flouting of norms. The death of the techie is the result of gross negligence. It was avoidable, and the tragic costs of apathy should jolt the city’s authorities – civic and otherwise – to do better.
