Tuesday, March 23, 2010

BRUHATH BENGALURU MAHANAGARA PALIKE ELECTIONS




All the 3 leading political parties BJP, Congress and JD(S) are contesting in the BBMP elections. Every one of them wants to test their luck. There are 195 wards and to get Mayoral seat one needs to muster 98 seats.
Every party is thinking that – the triangular contest will help them, the opposition votes will be divided and the rest of the two will suffer and.
The MPs are at central level and will not be reachable by common public, and MLAs are mini-MPs and are not very nearer to the public for day to day sufferings.
Hence the corporators are very much needed by the public to address the day-to-day issues.
What are the main issues of Bengaluru?
The population is now more than 6 million and it is increasing day by day. It is the 5th largest city in India. The abnormal population growth (mostly migrating from neighboring states) is the root cause for many of the problems for this true cosmopolitan metro city.
· Scarcity of water is a day-to-day affair for almost the entire city. Hardly 50% of the area is covered with Kaveri water connection. Remaining areas depend upon bore-well and other means.
o Even this Kaveri water is not available daily. It comes hardly thrice a week in winter and in summer it is even once in a week some times.
o While rich people can afford to buy – the middle class people suffer a lot and the poor have to walk a lot to fetch water.
o Water became a commercial commodity as per Government and became on affordable basis.
o This attitude should be changed. All the closed pipe connections at slums should be re-opened up and provided with water connection.
o Thus the most important focus for all the 195 corporators should be water.
§ Get Kaveri works completed in the incomplete and yet to be started areas.
§ Open up the water pipe connections in all areas – where they were closed earlier.
§ If needed increase the water costs according to the layout (income groups)
§ Charge more for the high consumption.
§ Ensure that the Water Trucks are completely eliminated.
§ Water is not a commodity and it is a right like air.
· Roads and pot holes: Bengaluru is very famous for the ugly roads, pot holes, and narrow and irregular pavements.
o The corporators should ensure that the encroachments are addressed on priority – specially the inner lanes.
o Many of the areas do not have lights glowing in late hours. These need to be addressed in 100% - in the absence of which there is a dangerous by accident and intentionally by the anti-social elements.
· Third point to be focused is - Traffic normalization. This is a never ending woe for Bengaluru. The fly-over’s completion is taking lot of time – in other metro cities the completion is being done relatively quickly.
o The traffic police also are not in a proactive mode – they are in reactive mode and fully corrupt.
o A regular vigil on the key traffic areas of each ward can make each corporator to plan and address the issues to evolve a strategy, work with RTO and solve the core problems.
o Strict traffic violation rules should be put in place especially for IT and BPO vehicles as they are the main root cause for the nuisance.
· Few other miscellaneous points to address
o Proper Good Government schools, with staff in all areas.
o Parks and Lakes development. Wherever those were abandoned – need to be rehabilitated.
o BMTC is improving a lot for the last couple of years, may be the best – continue the same and cover more new routes, increase frequency. That makes private traffic also reduced. Work with the Transport departments to take care of each ward’s requests.
o Conduct Janatha Darbars once a week.
· Last but not the least is - to be away from corruption and make Bengaluru corruption free not only by self-practice – but also enforcing in all the BBMP departments.

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