A spectre is haunting the great metropolis of Bengaluru. We may well be approaching a Cape Town-like Ground Zero, as the drought, which was until now at a safe distance from the Capital, looms dangerously large. Bengaluru is, of course, the most unsustainable of all our metropolises, since it is not close to a flowing water source, and hauls its water uphill, from the Cauvery nearly 100 km away. The city is now home to 13.5 million people, coming from all parts of the subcontinent.
But jobs (even if only of the gig kind) and pleasant weather do not make a liveable city. To begin with the banal observation, Bengaluru’s success seems to be its downfall. With a vehicular population of 10 million, of which 7.5 million are two-wheelers, its road system has for long been tottering towards complete collapse. Trevor Noah was only the most conspicuous of recent victims, but his no-show did little to budge the political imagination beyond the construction of tunnels to ease traffic. Bengaluru’s two metro lines stand as expensive ornaments, while its bus fleet is out-manoeuvred everywhere, all day, by the desperate Swiggy, Zomato, or Dunzo riders.
But it is water — whether in excess or, as now, in extreme dearth — that has brought the great metropolis to its knees. Originally catered to by the innumerable water bodies that dotted the landscape, meeting both agricultural and domestic needs, the city has lost close to 80% of its tanks, even as its populations soared by 47% in the same four decades. All this was foreseen in the innumerable expert city plans dating from the 1980s, but the singular logic of the real estate market turned every squelchy space into a marketable site.
It is a unique city after all: On the one hand, as many as 26 of Bengaluru’s 28 MLAs have declared business or real estate as their occupation, so we know where the political will to solve the city’s alarming water/transport crisis might lie. It is also the home of excellent scientific and technological expertise that has periodically exerted itself to address the problems of the city. But no amount of knowledge about the vital role played by tanks and tank beds in sustaining the city — generated by citizens’ groups, government-sponsored reports, NGOs, and scientists — has reoriented this aggressive city-building.
“Can the one who drained a tank to build a house now fear the flood?” The Kannada poet Sarvagna had the prescience to ask this in the 17th century. Can we dream of a better Bengaluru by shifting from tanks to tankers? A year ago, when there was a watery debacle, and flash floods reached the doorsteps of the bourgeoisie, forcing some of them to take to boats, the usual flurry of actions followed.
Stormwater drains were cleared of illegal constructions — until, that is, the entitled middle class wrung their hands and pleaded for clemency. Once more, all those who knew better warned that a Bengaluru that ignored its tank and tank beds was doomed to shrivel. But there was no recourse to the ruthless action against big builders and their bigger clients, who had destroyed the city’s many water sources.
Today, the city has reached close to Ground Zero, with even the tankers, which take water from the countryside, now close to running dry. Can the local authorities (since there is currently no elected city government) induce the water-guzzling middle class to become water-aware? This means a drastic 25% reduction in needs and privileges. Can they be persuaded to reduce their wants?
The impending water crisis, and the timid steps taken by the city authorities, have already met with grumbles and pushbacks. The prohibition on the use of potable water for some activities has, instead, made the middle class extremely inventive in explaining their water sources away.
Water is a resource for which the city’s property-owning class pays a pittance each month, even as the urban poor struggle to fill their jerry cans and buckets at a much higher cost. True, only 50% of Bengaluru is served by Cauvery water, with the rest relying on borewells and tankers. Meanwhile, as if to prove that they are entitled only to the profits of soaring property values and rising rents, Bengaluru’s rich and powerful are already mobilising public opinion against the decision of a cash-strapped Bengaluru Metropolitan Authority to raise, after a considerable period, property tax rates. Long-enjoyed privileges will not be easily relinquished. In which other major metro will car owners uncomplainingly pay parking fees at malls and shopping complexes, while street-side parking, all day and almost everywhere, is completely free?
Higher water rates and taxes, even if they cost some votes, will go a long way towards saving the city. But even this will not do if the better-endowed people of Bengaluru do not reduce their needs, self-consciously. Water sovereignty may not be an achievable goal, but water awareness, beginning in our schools, will have to be an urgent government programme in our times.
Janaki Nair is a historian and the author of The Promise of the Metropolis: Bangalore’s Twentieth Century. The views expressed are personal
Behind Bengaluru’s looming water thirst
5
0
12.03.2024
A spectre is haunting the great metropolis of Bengaluru. We may well be approaching a Cape Town-like Ground Zero, as the drought, which was until now at a safe distance from the Capital, looms dangerously large. Bengaluru is, of course, the most unsustainable of all our metropolises, since it is not close to a flowing water source, and hauls its water uphill, from the Cauvery nearly 100 km away. The city is now home to 13.5 million people, coming from all parts of the subcontinent.
But jobs (even if only of the gig kind) and pleasant weather do not make a liveable city. To begin with the banal observation, Bengaluru’s success seems to be its downfall. With a vehicular population of 10 million, of which 7.5 million are two-wheelers, its road system has for long been tottering towards complete collapse. Trevor Noah was only the most conspicuous of recent victims, but his no-show did little to budge the political imagination beyond the construction of tunnels to ease traffic. Bengaluru’s two metro lines stand as expensive ornaments, while its bus fleet is out-manoeuvred everywhere, all day, by the desperate Swiggy, Zomato, or Dunzo riders.
But it is water — whether in excess or, as now, in extreme dearth — that has brought the great metropolis to its knees. Originally........
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