Bengaluru - How To Ruin India's Best City

Its very allure has become Bengaluru's curse, as a growing population, administrative apathy, corruption and a construction boom strain its infrastructure and push it to the brink

- Raj-Chengappa With Ajay Sukumaran

THE GREAT MOBILITY MESS

10.4 million REGISTERED VEHICLES IN 2021-22

1:1 THE RATIO OF VEHICLES TO PEOPLE IN BENGALURU

243 EXTRA HOURS PEOPLE SPENT COMMUTING IN 2019 Source: Karnataka Transport Ministry annual report 2021-22 and TomTom Traffic Index 2019

A giant 10-storey-tall bronze statue of Kempe Gowda, the illustrious founder of Bengaluru, is being installed at the entrance of the city’s swank airport. Back in AD 1537, Gowda, a feudatory of the mighty Vijayanagara empire, built a fort on a 2.4 square kilometre site atop an undulating plateau with a vision of creating a city of the future. Engaging two pairs of bullocks with ploughs, he got one set to walk in the north-south direction and the other in an east-west one. He then built roads along the furrows they created, dividing the city into four zones. Areas for housing, markets, government, and worship were clearly demarcated. The city won praise for its orderly planning from even his emperor, Achyutha Deva Raya. It came to be called Bengaluru, whose meaning ranges from the City of Boiled Beans to the City of White Quartz to the place of the bodyguards, depending on which theory you are partial to.