Bill to improve Bengaluru erodes citizen power while leaving room for corruption, monopoly

The “Silicon Valley” of India and the hub of startups and innovation labs is reeling under a serious problem of urban mismanagement. Once known as the Garden City, City of Lakes, and Pensioner’s Paradise, the city of Bengaluru now has become synonymous with traffic jams, urban floods, heaps of garbage and poor quality of roads.

This increasing urban mismanagement is now affecting the city’s brand value and investment opportunities. The city was rated as the “least liveable city” in India by the European Intelligence Unit in its Global Liveability Index 2022.

To fix the city’s broken urban governance, poor coordination among civic agencies and lack of political representation, the Karnataka government tabled the Greater Bengaluru Governance Bill in the Karnataka legislative assembly in July. The bill proposes to split the current municipal corporation, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike, into smaller councils which would be governed by the Greater Bengaluru Authority in a three-tier administrative system starting from ward committees.

The aim of this new legislative reform was to provide better governance and living conditions in the rapidly expanding city of Bengaluru. However, the bill is being criticised because of its inability to address proper political representation and lack of accountability and transparency.

Janaagraha, a Bengaluru-based not-for-profit institution working to...

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