Saturday, June 27, 2009

Bangalore needs a few Quick Wins!!!

A few decades ago, a mention of Bangalore would have extracted comments like nice town, peace ful town, pensioners paradise etc. Go back just a few years, and Bangalore earned itself new adjectives like IT City, Silicon Valley of India. It even managed to add itself to the Oxfored dictionary as a verb.

Today, the mention of Bangalore, will only generate clamouring for Infrastructure, roads, pollution and so on.

But you may think this is despite the fact that Bangalore has quite a few Mega projects being rolled out. But this is not so. I feel this is because of the fact that Bangalore has so many Mega infrastructure projects that are going on together, with no end in sight.

The only win Bangalore has to show is the International Airport, which was itself delayed by several decades.

What Bangalore needs is a cohesive Mega Plan, which includes all the large Mega projects like the Metro, and several small projects.

The government has to bear in mind that people can put up with only so much. If we wait for all the Mega Projects to end, it may be too late and Bangalore may lose its stature as the IT Capital to nearby cities or even countries.

It is important that a small win is planned every 6 months, that people can celebrate. It will earn the government the support and backing it requires from the public over the next 5 years.

The plan to move the Race Course outside the city and building a World Trade Centre means yet another mega project that will not have anything to show for 3-4 years. Where as converting the Race Course to a Park, can be a quick win. It will also give Bangalore much needed lung space in the heart of the city.

Similarly, the Metro will take a few years to complete. However, something like a mono rail may be easier to implement. Kicking this off in parallel, will ensure a few monorail successes in between every phase of the Metro. This will give the public, a much needed boost while Bangalore undergoes this phase of rapid transformation.

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous9:08 AM

    Beg to differ. This small win mentality (albeit of a different kind, closer to polls) is in my opinion what has undone our great nation. What we need, really, is a mega plan with a grand vision.

    - FirstBallSix

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  2. I do agree with the fact that we do not have vision and that is evident in the manner in which mega projects are being rolled out. If you will read carefully, the article says we need big plans and mega plans. But not when you have NO existing INFRASTRUCTURE to support the growing population.

    For this you need some projects that feed into these mega projects and help solve issues in the near future.

    For example the Metro project plan is already available. Its going to take 20 years to put it into place.

    But along with this plan you can set up a monorail project to act as a feeder network to the Metro.

    This will see the light of day much before the metro and take some burden of our roads and at the same time will be a great boon once metro is in place.


    Bangalore may be a great place at the end of 25 years of Mega projects, but it will risk driving away all those people, companies and bustling life it has attracted so far.

    So yes Mega plans are a necessity, but we need to at the same time strive to make day to day living easier. And im not talking about underpasses and magic boxes as small projects. Thats short term vision.

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