I began my last post by describing myself as a member of the "NRI-return" species. It had quite a negative and pessimistic tone. I don't regret it since I believe every word was absolutely true. After living in a small town in Austria, living in a megapolis like Bengaluru is obviously jarring and can get nerve-wracking. As someone who lived in Europe for many years, I swear by public transport and walking to most places, which makes navigating Bengaluru particularly challenging. I know friends of mine who have not set foot in a city bus in decades. A sensible decision on their part.
Today I am not here to complain and whinge. I will never be taken for a defeatist. No situation is beyond redemption. Exceptional change is always underway in this world and humanity can make magic happen. I believe in Bengaluru. I genuinely believe that thirty years hence, we will have a clean, functioning, pleasant city without the constant noise of honking, no garbage pile-ups, heavy but disciplined traffic driving and riding in accordance with neatly painted lane markings on roads in good condition with ample space for walking, well functioning pedestrian infrastructure, a large, effective network of suburban rail, metro and bus with great prosperity, economic growth and a good standard of living. Clean air, clean water, clean public spaces, more greenery. Maybe the Vrishabhavati will continue to stink, but she will definitely flow much much cleaner and people will know it is a dirty river rather than an open sewage.
Things always get far far better before they get worse. This a path charted by the course of development for every nation. Remember the apocalyptic headlines about smog and pollution in Beijing and Shanghai about 15-20 years ago. When China was close to hosting the summer Olympics games. Today these are not the world's most polluted cities any more. Not because they sacrificed breathless economic activity or the meteorology changed. It is because of government interventions and implementation of laws necessitated by the situation getting worse and air pollution becoming a major topic of local frustration as well as international embarrassment.
I remember speaking to someone visiting New Delhi from Australia in January and asked him how he handled the pollution. A fairly senior person, he told me he grew up in Los Angeles and so he actually expected far worse. I was surprised - I had never heard of Los Angeles or California being associated with air pollution. I looked it up and indeed, Los Angeles had smog far worse than even Delhi, with high levels of ozone - arguably worse for health than particulate matter that is the main focus today.
London suffered from terrible smog and pollution as well in the late 1800s all the way up to the 1950s. Here is a nice article on this - https://ourworldindata.org/london-air-pollution. I have been to London quite recently and I can tell you, it's an amazing city to be in today. Traffic is heavily regulated and tariffed, public transport is wide-spread, bicycles are a chief means of transport. Public spaces are clean, apart from the occasional overflowing garbage bin in a corner that is simply a fact of every big city. The air is clean. The river Thames still stinks though.
In 1858, London had what came to be known as "The great stink", a hot, humid summer day when the city stank so badly that Parliament was disrupted. The interesting thing here is that it was an improvement in technology that led to the great stink. Before sewage and toilets with plumbing, houses simply had holes in the ground into which human waste and other waste was emptied. These holes, called cesspits, overflowed onto the streets, seeped into walls, etc., but life went on. When the flush toilet became widespread, this "cleaner" technology ended up leading to more water collecting in these cesspits, more of them overflowing with the water ending up in the river Thames. The hot summer led to the river bed drying up and all the waste from a rapidly growing population stagnated there.
It is a classic cycle - increased prosperity, population growth and clustering near economic centres, increased stress on public services, increased consumption destroying public spaces until it comes too large an issue to ignore any more.
On traffic - Bengaluru's biggest problem - I would take the example of the Cheonggyecheon Expressway in South Korea. A quick google search of before and after pictures tells a fabulous story through time. We must remember South Korea's miraculous journey from a dirt-poor country in the 1960s and 70s to the economic engine it is today. The Cheonggyecheon stream meandering its way through marshes with shanties and tin houses on the banks, then the city growing in a chaotic, unplanned way around it. The stinking stream was covered in concrete and a massive expressway was built to cut right through Seoul to handle the burgeoning traffic. It was a symbol of grand infrastructure development and a symbol of national pride and progress. Traffic was terrible in the 90s, South Korea was notorious for grid-locked traffic, until they started applying congestion charges and other measures to control traffic. Around 2003, the expressway was actually broken down and the old stream was restored with a large park and public space built on the same land that was once a covered sewage channel. Clean water flows through Seoul now and traffic is actually better despite this huge arterial road being demolished.
This kind of development is happening the world over. We know the famous success story of the Netherlands with bicycles. Having been there I can assure you, the calm streets of Netherlands are a joy to walk on. Paris has been massively cutting down on road space and adding cycling paths, very significantly improving air quality and improving congestion. Smaller roads actually lead to better traffic as people use alternatives. London is doing something very similar. Chinese cities have built up public transport at an unparalleled scale and even brought up a massive network of high-speed rail to complement their highways.
I see glimmers of hope in Bengaluru. Footpaths have become a contested space. Maybe it is just my algorithm, but there is a growing number of content creators and activists who ask, hey, where are the decent footpaths to walk on? The recent drive to clear street vendors from footpaths saw quite a bit of public support. I particularly like the current Minister for Bengaluru, Mr. Krishna Byre Gowda.
I know skeptics and cynics who will say that all his actions are purely gimmicks for the camera. I don't fully agree, but let us accept this. I think the words of politicians hold a lot of truth. Not because they don't lie, they almost always do, but because they want to be seen to be saying popular things. If a high-profile politician walks through a busy market area and demands officials to clear a footpath to render it walkable, the truth is that there are a lot of people who want the footpaths cleared and the Minister wants a camera to capture him getting it cleared. A clear footpath is then an actual political issue that people care about. I love gimmicks on the right topic.
Another reason why gimmicks about the state of public spaces are great is that you cannot really claim things that are simply not true. "We created jobs" or "we improved the conditions of our sub-sub-caste" are claims that anyone can make and verification is not straight-forward. But a minister claiming to be getting Bengaluru cleaned or getting footpaths cleared cannot really bluff for a long time. So those gimmicks will have to be followed by actual action or lead to unpopularity once the PR budget runs out.
Bengaluru has a large population of people who genuinely care about the city. We are one of the foremost technology hubs of the world. The number of cars on the street have sky-rocketed and infrastructure is struggling to keep up with the influx of people. Garbage piles dot the landscape, walking is hell, commuting is hell. Just living is hell. But there is a mad rush to get somewhere and do something. The scale at which prosperity, measured by just money available in the hands of people to spend, has shot upwards at a very rapid speed.
The challenges are unique because of the technology of our times. No matter the amount of sewage, London never faced these levels of plastic pollution - that's because plastic was not common in the 1800s. They faced the problem of horse manure piling up on the streets. Sadly, plastic is fundamentally worse for our collective future than horse manure that will decompose and return to the soil eventually. So in a way our development journey is much dirtier and harsher on the environment. But we're also adopting solar energy in India at a break-neck speed, so our carbon emissions while we develop will be far lower.
I know I am completely sheltered from so many daily struggles because of my privileges. The naysayers will point to the "development" and say at what cost? What about inequality? What about public services? They will come. The city is rapidly improving, but not fast enough. One day the improvements will compound. That one extra metro line will suddenly form a small network affect that drastically takes the load of one network of roads. Those metro lines will be incredibly congested, but new train by new train, that will slowly ease up.
Once that happens, a new normal will set in. And people will now take that for granted, clamour for the next demand. And then the next.
I see the Cockroach Party protests in this light. It is known as the Tocqueville paradox - as social conditions, freedoms, and prosperity improve, people's dissatisfaction and desire for further change actually increase. A government that actually brings a good change to the lives of people is at great risk of facing the ire of the people. For example, I would never look at a 6-lane highway and be greatly impressed. It is the same with airports. It is the same with lack of garbage and litter at Bengaluru Railway Station. I am just used to it now and I cannot continue to commend a government for bringing about this change, even if it was in the last decade. Even while the Chief Minister of Karnataka keeps talking about tunnel roads and multiple new flyovers, I already want Bengaluru's flyovers to be torn down and the sewage networked and treated. I want congestion charges on cars and at least 500 kms of metro. My mind is already in Seoul 2003. Hopefully that will be Bengaluru in 2040.
I am bullish that these changes will come about. Delhi will be smog free in 30 years. People will not be senselessly driving down the wrong side of the street in Bengaluru.
And we should not be under this impression that it is some kind of inevitable, manifest destiny. It really needs exceptional governance and leadership in Delhi and more importantly, in the states. It needs a Chinese or Singaporean level of national resolve from the leadership to push it. And I deeply believe it will happen.
The thing that we citizens can help decide is how bad the absolute worst will be. If we are more proactive, if we call up the municipal officials when we see a garbage mound, if we whine on twitter about every broken footpath and poorly designed bus stop, in little ways, we can make sure that at least one little street corner is saved from this seeming dysfunctionality. And then the next street corner, then the next street corner. Until it all comes together.
In my humble opinion, turning our backs is not an option. We have a stake in this. Do we want to retire comfortably in a city with a good standard of living? Do we want to pass on the legacy of a well thought-out city?
To echo the Prime Minister's words at a recent speech - "We can do it. We will do it."