In the Seventies it was a pensioners’ paradise with retired government employees flocking to the Karnataka Housing Board (KHB) layout in Yelahanka New Town in search of peace and quiet. An assistant engineer with the HAL , R. Shamanna, now 70, moved to Yelahanka New Town when nearing retirement, seeing it as the perfect getaway from the maddening crowd and traffic of the city. “Although it had its shortcomings where transportation and other facilities were concerned, they did not matter much. We lived peacefully despite relying only on the one bus that took us to City market," recounts Mr Shamanna.
Cut to the present and you see a vastly changed Yelahanka New Town. The roads that were once wide enough to accommodate the traffic, have today become congested. And with the authorities planning to widen them more, many of the people who had hoped to spend the rest of their lives undisturbed in Yelahanka New Town are now facing the prospect of being displaced. "Our dream of living in the New Town is going for a toss in the process," complains Mr Shamanna, upset that the 9th B Cross, once a purely residential area, is slowly turning commercial with houses giving way to shops and commercial complexes. "When the Bengaluru Development Authority (BDA) has a master plan with detailed zonal regulations, how can it be so blind to such blatant violations which have turned a residential area commercial, changing the whole dimension of the road?" he asks.
Living on the street is tough today as the shops have brought with them increased traffic and vehicles parked haphazardly on the road. "Also, the road, which has a junction where four roads meet , has been badly planned, with two deep curves within 50 meters of each other," Mr Shamanna observes, wondering why the KHB had been so slipshod in planning even at the complex which sees quite a bit of traffic every day.
"With even our footpaths occupied by vegetable and flower vendors, the locality which was once serene, has gone to the dogs today," he laments.