Bangalore Blog 2- Karnataka Elections 2023 - How the builder-politician nexus has ruined the city and how citizens are slowly fighting back

This is part 1 of my Bangalore blog for your reference.

I grew up in an area called Shantinagar which falls almost exactly in the centre of Bangalore. The area consists of people from literally all kinds of demographics - be it religion, language and age. The area has also seen a Congress MLA called Nalapad Ahmed Haris (known as NA Haris - you can have a smart guess why he chose such an moniker) who has been in power since 2018. Haris is an extremely smart politician and comes from a reasonably well to do background. He has declared assets of over 200 Cr with large land holdings, hotels and other real estate (so you can only guess on what his real wealth would be). His empire is an important cog for the Congress election wheel in Karnataka where he can literally buy a loyal votebase, comprising especially of minorities and the labour class in his constituency of Shantinagar.

However, his patronage of his votebase has let do people like me (my family) to suffer for many years where his votebank does whatever it wants (illegally) and gets away with it. Its obvious that I have a grudge against him. But there’s more - his son "Nalapad Haris” puts even entitled kids to shame and is someone who does whatever he wants and gets away with it.

You may think that I’m a “bhakt” and have grudge against the Indian National Congress? Think again. Fast forward to 2020-2023, I now live in an area called Yemalur which is sandwiched between the old HAL airport and Bellandur -an area which is far closer to the offices in “new” Bangalore. New Bangalore to me is the embodiment of what is wrong with Bangalore’s “development” - there are massive commercial and residentials complexes built on natural stormwater drainages and with village like road connectivity, the traffic and urban transport is as unplanned as it can be with brain-dead u-turns all over the place and the entire area being the least walkable area in the city (or maybe the planet). The area falls under the Mahadevpura constituency which has a sitting MLA named Arvind Limbavali from the BJP. In fact, he has now nominated his wife to stand for elections in the upcoming elections - maybe he has larger ambitions now or maybe he is trying to circumvent something - I’m not too sure.

This part of Bangalore is where constuction boom is the highest and where politicians can make their maximum money in quick time and expand their empire. They don’t give a shit about urban design and sustainable development. They don’t care about goons and mafias plundering the groundwater near Bellandur Lake to supply water via tankers. They don’t care about the millions of hours on manpower lost daily due to absolutely simple design flaws in urban infrastructure. They have a very strong nexus with all the landlords and are often landlords (in some shady way) themselves.

If you thought these netas are rich, then a certain INC neta called DK Shivakumar puts all of them to shame - he is arguably the next CM candidate of the INC in Karnataka. Even if he isn’t -he is the real power centre of the INC in Karnataka and has declared assets of 1200 Crs.

When the young and fiery MP, the BJP MP 32 year old Tejasvi Surya was elected in 2019 as the MP for Bangalore South- a very rich constituency, there was some hope that that maybe things will change at least a little even if he was so openly communal (See tweet below).

Now it can be safely concluded that the young MP is probably a little too similar to his leader Modiji and is yet another of the 2 million odd BJP MLAs and MP who piggyback their way to electoral victory based on Modiji’s strongman cred. I did a rough analysis of his last 200 tweets - more than 60% of them refer to Modiji but hardly anything about what HE has done for his constituency.

Our man, just like all the other 2 million odd BJP MPs and MLAs freeride on Modiji’s popularity bandwagon. In the tweet above, it almost sounds like Modiji’ himself laid down all the bricks and pillars and welding by himself.

The following tweet was probably the last time he tweeted about himself (joke) and we all know how glorious the Indian version of Stonehenge aka the unfinished-for-8-years Ejipura Flyover has turned out to be. To be fair, at least he tried.

In other recent news, another brain dead set of babus banned games, PDA and picnics at Cubbon Park. I’ve been to Cubbon Park, especially on Sunday mornings and its so important as a free green space in a city that is getting more and more congested. Indian needs such free spaces too give some semblence of quality of life that is so so lacking.
But the babus and the older geysers (old morning walkers) have other ideas and want their level best to keep “Indian culture” intact.

Now that election season is upon us, poll-ticians will do what it takes to brew any kind of regional/communal insecurity to milk as many votes as possible like what you see in the tweet below where they propogated anti-Amul (Gujarat) and pro Nandini (Karnataka) sentiments.

Unplanned and rapid construction activity has absolutely ****ed Bangalore’s infrastructure and ecology and I blame the politician-builder-landlord nexus almost solely for this. I also put a chunk of blame on “digging mafia” as seen in the image below

Remember the great Bangalore floods from 2022 where the flooded Outer Ring Road, Manyata Tech Park, Sarjapur Road and the ultra luxury villa township Epsilon? All made national news. Turns out that all of them were built on natural drainage lines. One can be reasonably sure that they were out of bounds for “development” once upon a time but a few changes in laws and a few suitcases of cash exchanged between the babus and builders must have changed all this.

I’d recommend following this wonderfully informative Twitter handle called Raj Bhagat P where he covers issues with not only Bangalore but a lot of other regions in India. Some examples of his threads on Bangalore’s infra issues, especially the floodings are this one, this one or this one.

Its not all doom and gloom - the citizens are slowly but surely fighting back - at times almost at risk of arrest. There are lots of citizen movements, apparently over 2000, such as Whitefield Rising, Citizens for Sankey etc that are fighting back.

To cite one example - the much controversial “steel flyover” that was supposed to connect central Bangalore to Hebbal at the cost of serious ecological damage was shelved thanks largely due vociferous protests by citizen groups.

Now, the brain-dead twins of BDA (Bangalore Development Authority) and BBMP, who always look for new means of “development” (Ejipura flyover being the classic example) now proposes a flyover in the pristine Sankey Road area. The area is amongst the richest and oldest areas in Bangalore and the citizens there fought back (peacefully) as seen in the image below.

Its well known that flyovers/underpasses DO NOT REALLY WORK - it just passes traffic from one zone to another but hey how will the babus earn election funds without these?

Unfortunately for these well meaning citizens, the disgustingly vengeful government actually charged an FIR against them.

Citizen movement have brought about more transparency and accountability from the babus and governments. There are pockets of positive energy as well as seen in the tweets below -

The Karnataka elections are upon us in a few days’ time and I make the following requests to you - please consider to not vote for the incumbent party or the primary opposition party. Vote for AAP, vote NOTA or vote for an idealist nobody but do not vote for the 2 rotating incumbents. I know that AAP haven’t turned out to be the ideal party we hoped for but they also need to do what it takes (such as gives freebies like electricity) to get some mileage and traction. The idealistic hope here is that as more people vote away from these 2 parties, even if the continue winning, they will amend their ways overtime.

Also, please go to Cubbon Park and have a picnic, play frisbee and cuddle with your loved one - ideally in front of a group of “old geysers”.