Subir Roy: Littering an R&D hub

Mr Murthy’s taxis had always been reliable. So we called him long-distance to send one at 4 p m to Yesvantpur railway station on the outskirts of Bangalore where our train would arrive. But at the appointed hour there was no sign of the cab, and the good feeling created by a fine journey on board the Duronto quickly sank. The last thing you wanted to do was haggle with the few taxis that would be there, ready to fleece passengers who had no choice.

Then a young man came to our rescue. He insisted that his new auto-rickshaw, which was spacious and easy to ride, would be able to hold all our luggage and have space for us too. The clincher was the fare he quoted — half of what the taxi would have cost. So there we were, bouncing gamely along indifferent side roads negotiating dogs, scurrying children and hurtling oncoming autos. And just as I was getting a bit worried about where we were headed, the auto suddenly emerged reassuringly on a main road next to the huge campus of the Indian Institute of Science.

 

This set a pattern that was repeated many times over. The auto would suddenly leave a main road and its well-appointed buildings and plunge into slum lands that I never knew existed. One of them was bound on one side by the high walls of a well-known military formation. Another must be keeping its hope alive amidst the squalor by having in sight the spire of a fine old church. It was also well insulated from the filth of the slums by high walls that allowed it to retain the purity of its unsullied life.

Finally, when we reached home – that is, our apartment block with its guards at the gate and carefully nurtured greenery inside – I was hit by a reality I had known somewhat theoretically: people like us, or me, are such a minority in urban India. I had just been given a free tour of a lowly, humble dirty and alive Bangalore that lived cheek by jowl with the Bangalore of popular imagination where wealth and good taste complemented each other. Every posh neighbourhood had a slum behind it, to sustain it, as in every other Indian city.

The one thing in common to the two Bangalores was the city’s signature gentle cool breeze — which almost never failed, except in the height of summer in late afternoon. Well, there was also a new commonality, a great leveller, emerging. Over the last couple of months, the city administration has been fighting a battle against a stubborn garbage disposal problem that has created stinking mounds in some of the best neighbourhood, no different from those that are permanent features in the other Bangalore.

The fact that Bangalore is not one but two cities has now been officially recorded in at least one rigorous exercise. A United Nations study of cities around the world bestows high praise on the city and Hyderabad, identifying them as innovation clusters in the same genre as Silicon Valley and Boston’s Route 128 in the United States. This has put it on the same footing as Singapore, China’s Shenzhen and the Philippines’ Cebu. In all of them there is a strong link between R&D and prosperity, with public authorities and other stakeholders – whether in business, industry or technology – playing significant roles. 

But that is not all. The report also notes worryingly that economic growth has not been matched by adequate infrastructure and services. It mentions issues like the city’s poor air quality, falling groundwater table and shrinking lakes. The health of the environment is poor and the benefits of growth are not evenly shared. This also puts it in another category of cities across the world with similar dualities like Lahore and Ho Chi Minh City. 

There are any number of Indian cities ridden with the same duality as Bangalore, but they do not have its pluses. But the presence of top-quality research institutions and substantial public and private investments has not been able to rid it of the duality. I opened the papers next morning to find upbeat stories of how, if the city’s upcoming metro rail project was extended to the airport, it could take people there in under an hour. Wealth-creating hubs have to keep raising their residents’ productivity in order to sustain themselves. It will not do for them to waste time travelling in slow coaches. How long will it take for everyone in the city to board the fast train?

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