Ruler’s crises, citizen’s pain
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Bengaluru has never had a local government it can be proud of as no one seems to clear its streets of garbage or cares to fill the potholes on its roads. It is difficult to imagine worse anarchy in administration, but with the men at the helm of affairs in the state falling like dominoes at the whims of politicians holding it to ransom for their own ends, the city's civic agencies are having to deal with uncertainty in funding, approval of projects and over assurance of political will to see them through.
With the state getting a new chief minister for the third time in four years, projects planned for the city have hardly taken shape as with every change in leadership the old are put on hold and new ones thought up, say those closely associated with developing the city's infrastructure. As the BBMP, Bangalore Development Authority (BDA), BWSSB and other civic agencies depend largely on state government funds for execution of their projects the frequent change in its leadership is not just de-motivating for their officers, but also a huge setback to the implementation of the many plans drawn up, they say.
While the BDA is in a limbo, a huge question mark now hangs over whether the BBMP which has announced an outlay of around 9,000 crore in its budget, will get the promised Rs 700 crore from the state government to execute infrastructure projects in the city. “A number of projects were discussed with the Sadananda Gowda government but as he is no longer in the top job, its now unclear whether they will ever be implemented. For instance, Mr. Sadananda Gowda was keen on upgrading 53 major roads and had even allocated around Rs 200 crore for this, but now whether this project will take off is anybody's guess. We are hoping that we don’t have to convince the government again to implement it,” says advisor to the government and member of the Center for Infrastructure, Sustainable Transport and Urban Planing (CISTUP), Vivek Menon, who is afraid that civic agencies could be in for more trouble if there is another reshuffle of bureaucrats in the new regime.
The fact that the new Chief Minister, Mr Jagadish Shettar will hardly have 10 months in office is also seen as a disadvantage as even before he can get familiar with the projects and their status, the elections to the state assembly could be round the corner, making their execution difficult.
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