Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai is scheduled to present his maiden Budget for the year 2022-23 on March 4. With Assembly elections just a year away, the Budget is an important device for communicating the priorities of the government. As the Chief Minister holds the key portfolios of finance and Bengaluru development, it will be interesting to see what the Budget promises for the city. Can it provide the necessary impetus for improving the state of the city?
While looking ahead at the upcoming budget, it is important to examine what the government had proposed for the city earlier. In the previous budget, the then Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa had allocated ₹7,795 crore for the development of Bengaluru. This included ₹850 crore for the suburban rail project, ₹169 crore to develop Koramangala Valley as a tourist attraction, and setting up of ‘Janarogya’ centres in 57 wards of BBMP. Many of the projects had already been announced by the Chief Minister in December under the ‘Bengaluru Mission 2022-Bengalurige Navachaitanya’.
The Mission aimed to provide Bengaluru with “world-class infrastructure” to make it a “global city”. It sought to enable faster commute through the promotion of public transport; create a greener city through the development of clean waterways, lakes, and mini forests; address the garbage menace through new waste management systems and provide easy access to public services online. While many of these policy pronouncements are positive, the key question to consider is to what extent they have translated on the ground. This is where the government’s lofty assertions fall short.
In September 2021, Mr. Bommai declared in the Legislative Athat a total of ₹20,060 crore had been spent on road development and maintenance in Bengaluru over the last five years. He announced that the government would conduct an audit of the road works. However, there has been no update on this audit since then.
In the 2020-21 Budget, the government had allocated ₹1,000 crore for the development of roads in 110 villages added to the BBMP, but this project was later dropped. It is important for the government to evaluate how its pronouncements have been implemented before it announces more projects. Since much of Bengaluru’s roads and pavements are presently dug up, such announcements mean very little if they don’t improve people’s mobility.
It is also important to examine the process by which such projects are rolled out. Bengaluru’s development is primarily driven by the Chief Minister and funded under special grants from the State. In January 2022, the Cabinet approved ₹6,000 crore for the Amruth Nagarothana scheme under which the BBMP implements the State’s infrastructure projects. Officials in the finance department have reportedly objected to this special grant as there is no clarity regarding the availability of funds and the BBMP may have to obtain loans for it. With the BBMP already saddled with many loans, such projects might further burden the struggling body.
The underlying issue with such measures is that the government views the BBMP as merely an implementing body and not a city government with its own voice and agency. The BBMP has been functioning without an elected council since September 2020 and the government has shown little urgency to conduct the pending election, even while bypolls for the Legislative Assembly were held during COVID-19. The government’s approach of addressing Bengaluru’s challenges continues to be centralised interventions like creating new parastatals to perform municipal functions such as public health and solid waste management which further enfeebles an already weak local government.
Mr. Bommai recently mentioned that the government is drawing up a vision document for Bengaluru’s development. Many of his predecessors had also drawn up vision documents and created vision groups with “eminent citizens”. Such measures with no institutional grounding haven’t achieved much in the past. Meanwhile, the statutory master plan for Bengaluru that was drawn up in 2017 was unceremoniously discarded and a fresh exercise initiated.
As citizens struggle through the various civic woes, announcements of more visions and projects are unlikely to inspire much confidence. Instead of centralised decision-making, the government should embrace fiscal decentralisation and devolve funds to BBMP to allow it to set the agenda for the city’s future in a democratic and participative manner.
(Mathew Idiculla is a legal and policy consultant on urban issues and a visiting faculty at Azim Premji University)
