Karnataka State's Recipe for Future Development around Bangalore.

In a recent news item, as shown in the clip to left, the Karnataka State Cabinet has given its nod to implement a project aimed at decongesting Bangalore, by developing 8 small townships around Bangalore.

A Google Map of the proposal is presented later in this blog post. In addition to showing the NICE Road (green) and the Outer Ring Roads (purple), it shows the 8 townships (purple) proposed by the State Cabinet. It also shows the Bangalore airport.

The proposed cost of this development, according to the article, is ₹2,100 crores, or approximately US $400 M in today's exchange rate.

Loss of a US Passport in Bangalore.

Image source: Wikipedia.

It happened to one of my relatives in a recent visit to Bangalore. This relative — call her Ms. X — had come to Bangalore from the United States to attend her cousin's wedding. Not only did she miss the central wedding ceremony, a primary purpose of her visit, the Kanyadaan (ಕನ್ಯಾದಾನ), but ended up having to deal with officials from the Karnataka State Police and visiting the US Consulate in Chennai, before she could continue with her return journey as scheduled.

Once she realized she had 'lost' her purse, most likely due to someone's lifting it away from where she had set it down in the wedding hall as a temporary measure, it became important to let the local police know about it. And, we had to reach out to the police that had the proper jurisdiction over the wedding venue. We prepared  the report, all of it hand-written. (For a state government that boasts of trillions of rupees in IT exports by 2020, and as the IT Hub of India, it is somewhat ironical that the Karnataka police stations are not well equipped with adequate computer machinery: we had to file a hand-written report).

A Morning Walk in a Bangalore Park.

While Bangalore may be better known internationally for its Software Technology Parks, a rather large number of public parks with varied plant content do dot the city, and provide valuable infrastructure for exercising and socialization. Lal Bagh and Cubbon Park, of course, are two of the more famous ones. The few of them I visited in recent years are indeed very well designed to encourage walking, or jogging, as a means of exercise for the local inhabitants. The photo depicted on the right is a morning scene from Dhanvantari Park in J P Nagar 2nd Phase, in the southern part of Bangalore.

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A morning walk in such a park can be refreshing in more than one way. The obvious physical benefits of exercising before a breakfast is, of course, well-known. An unstated rule in most of these parks (with endless walkways) is to go clockwise from where you can enter the walkway. This is perhaps an influence of how devotees go about doing pradakshina in Indian temples.

In addition, in a morning walk in a place like the Dhanvantari Park, you see additional entertainment and intellectual benefits as well:

A Master Plan for Bangalore's Development?

In Girish Karnad Reflects on Bangalore, India, you learn of Girish's view on haphazard growth of the city, with no effective, central, theme to aid in the city's growth. As a collective bunch, either the city fathers are overwhelmed, or clueless, depending on your point of view.

Several questions arise in anyone's mind, particularly if that someone has some experience of having lived in the city.

1. Is it too difficult to analyze the effect of a new high-rise, or any major structure, before sanctioning its construction?
2. How happy are Bangalore's citizens regarding how Namma Metro has evolved?
3. As any local economy grows, it is bound to generate some discontinuities. Have the city fathers created a satisfactory template that can guide the city's growth? 

I, for one, would like to see a master plan at the BBMP web site.