Development

The TenderSURE project of the Karnataka government has always remained in the news—for right reason or wrong, more so from the time that work on the project got under way. Almost all of those were either claims or allegations. But none of those come across as conclusive either way for the people because both claims and allegations were circumstantial. Everyone's point of view had been rightly raised and heard, but somewhere in between, truth had become a collateral damage. For the people of this...

When Swati Ramanathan, chairperson of tje Jana Urban Space Foundation (Jana USP), complained of not being treated properly by the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) and that she/Jana USP had "volunteered" to do all the construction drawings in the interest of "ensuring quality" of the "unique" project, she had been called out by the chief engineer for road instruction. The engineer had at the meeting of February 28, 2014 argued that the drawings would have been part of the detailed...

One of the reasons why allegations against the TenderSURE initiative of the Karnataka government has not made much headway is that all agencies and government departments have been pointing towards someone else, or simply passing the buck. No one wants to take ownership of the problems. For instance, the Jana Urban Space Foundation (Jana USP, as it calls itself), that has been at the forefront of the project, has always insisted that it is the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) that is...

When controversies erupted over the TenderSURE project of the Karnataka government that sought to re-engineer major roads of Bangalore, most of those were dismissed as conspiracy theories of activists or simply as fertile imagination of habitual detractors of "developmental" projects. A set of documents, procured individually under provisions of the Right to Information (RTI) Act, however indicate that most allegations against the state government—right from the decision to undertake such a...

In the first week of October, what was hitherto only looming large over the trade horizon became a disturbing reality. Twelve countries announced the inking of the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) after years of clandestine negotiations. Though the partnership has not yet been ratified by lawmakers from the member countries of the Pacific Rim that constitute the bloc, it is likely to cause a flutter in global trade equations. And affect India’s already-declining exports, too...

The ancient Romans had a widely-used adage: Ovem lupo committere. Translated into English, the Latin expression would mean: to set a wolf to guard the sheep. The construct has had many variations and mutations over time and across geographies, but the essence remains the same. This thought would cross one’s mind many times over while going through the report of the High-Level Committee (HLC) that was constituted to review Acts administered by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate...

Prime Minister Narendra Modi may or may not have succeeded on many fronts in the one year that his party has led a coalition government at the Centre. Many issues are debatable, but one that cannot be denied is the unabashed and relentless assault on those who speak for the environment. But examining the issue only through a saffron-hued prism, or one that selectively blocks out saffron light would not be correct – both are equally fallacious and self-defeating. It is important to understand...

The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) always gets it left, right and centre when it comes to governance. And, if good governance were to be about participatory democracy, the BBMP would be reckoned to be an abject failure. For over 20 years, various ruling dispensations in the state had virtually ignored the Constitution (74th Amendment) Act, 1992, which devolves power to basic units of governance in cities and towns called ward committees. The result was a lack of transparency in civic...

The issue of splitting up the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) into smaller corporations, under some pretext or the other, has cropped up on a number of occasions in recent times. Only that, this time it's more than an academic exercise – a split definitely seems quite on the cards. What is, however, ironic in the ongoing babble over the pros and cons of a possible trifurcation of the BBMP is that many have changed opinions as times have changed. In January 2013, at a seminar on...

If financial health is to be taken as the bottomline, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has been lying comatose for a while, kept alive only by alternately conniving and obliging state governments irrespective of political ideologies. The BBMP is a financial disaster for many reasons, the prime among them being the tendency to live beyond its means, not mopping up enough revenue for itself, and, of course, rampant corruption at all levels of the corporation. It has only been doing...