Does one call it Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagar Palike or Big Bengaluru Mired in Politics ? The latter sounds more apt for a civic agency plagued by games of political one-upmanship and scams.
For the past 10 days, everything written in newspapers or aired on news channels about the city has boiled down to garbage and more garbage. The mega corporation that governs the city works with a budget of around Rs 8,000 crores, making it the richest civic body in South India but its failure to deliver on all counts is there for all to see. The fact that it cannot manage the city's garbage shows how laid-back it is in its approach, but it still has the audacity to believe it can do a better job of maintaining a self-sustaining Electronic City that is doing very well without its help.
From 2005 to 2008, there was no elected body in the corporation as it graduated from being the much smaller Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BMP) to the larger BBMP. While the city yearned for an elected body, hoping it would turn things round for the better, the council with its 198 members, when it did arrive, went on to reduce the civic agency to a sham. An ineffective ruling party and an opposition which has does done nothing but make cosmetic protests against the many scams, have left the organisation inept.
From 2008 till date, the BBMP has been constantly involved in controversies and scandals. While crores are spent on roads every year, the huge craters never seem to disappear on roads even in the hear of the city and big ticket projects planned to utilise rainwater have gone down the drain.