The sidewalks that lead to Bengaluru’s Ranga Shankara theatre are obstacle courses of paving slabs and steel pipes, perhaps thrown about by a giant. Manhole covers obtrude upwards at odd angles, seemingly to trip up pedestrians. The opening lines of NDTV anchor Ravish Kumar’s Magsaysay award acceptance speech — “My streets have craters and potholes which outnumber the moon”— ought to be an Indian urban rap song. In very few cities in Asia would such shoddy standards of public construction be acceptable.
Yet it is perhaps because of cityscapes akin to the aftermath of an earthquake that the Bharatiya Janata
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