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Best Practices for Bangalore

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Written By Bengloorappa - 8 April, 2008

Civic amenities Bangalore Infrastructure CDP Bangalore BBMP environment suggestion

I am trying to enlist here some of the best practices that I have seen/heard about City Management. Please feel free to add, edit/dissect as you may please.

1. Locality based Infrastructure Management - A la Delhi model can be adopted by empowering local Residents' associations, where available, to get Infrastructure like Roads, Parks, Water and Waste management managed and maintained on a locality basis and make engineers and other city corporation employees answerable to such associations as well as to their own management. This can lead to quick addressal of grievances and form power centres for effective infra management. In Delhi, residents' associations are headed by retired govt. employees who have plenty of time on their hands and a vision for their locality.

2. Local waste disposal - Local waste disposal and handling centres can be formed on the basis of tonnage of waste generated and it can be linked-up with direct waste consumers such as the Khan brothers of K K Plastic Waste Management Pvt Ltd fame, thus avoiding useful waste filling space in landfills.

  • Door-to-door collection is a good step in this direction, but infrastructure should be augmented to collect waste in a modern hydraulic haul truck instead of a hand drawn cart.
  • Refusal to collect unsorted waste would promote participation by households in the effort.
  • Seggregation and management can be privatised providing much needed employment to hundreds.

3. Green Citizen points - Allocate green points to households that collaborate and co-exist with the surroundings by being exemplary. For ex: A house which is built with 100% adherence to the approved plan, having rain water harvesting, built with no disruption to trees around it and using alternate source of energy such as Solar energy will get 'X' number or green points. These points could then be exchanged for material benefits such as increase in FAR for future construction, say. Thus incentivising active citizen collaboration can result in large-scale awarness and mutual benefits.

4. Impose Recycling tax on Sale of electronics, batteries and cars - Some are not going to like this idea, but someone's gotta pay for recycling of electronics and hazardous waste. The concept may be very new in India since the re-use of electronics is extreme and is junked only 7-15 years after purchase, depending on the working condition.
This recycling tax can be used to fund proper disposal of hazardous waste in electronics, cars, air-conditioners etc.

5. Primary health-care scheme for people Below Poverty Line - This scheme operated by the City municipality in tie-up with a third party service provider(for ex: Mediclaim) could be a boon to people who cannot afford costly treatment/ or day-to-day primary healthcare. This could be augmented by funds from the govt sponsored Yashaswini health insurance scheme at minimal or no-cost to eligible citizens.

These are just indicative suggestions and may be unviable for implementation due to various reasons, but what stops us from discussing and suggesting this to the BBMP.

COMMENTS

locality based

tsubba - 9 April, 2008 - 12:10

i agree with your locality based approach. that is how things should be thought of. have been discussing this with blrsri for a while now, but that has been mostly about networks. they did this bbmp thingie with all that gutso, i think it dilutes focus and attention. needs and essentials of koramangala are much different from those of malleshwara which are much different of those of rajajinagara and must be addressed locally. koramangala citizens are best equipped to decide on what type of schools, parks they need, whether to allow this business here and that business there, how much set back is ok, how much FAR is ok, etc etc. these are decisions that should be a made locally and locally only. but anything that is a part of a network, roads, water and sewage, electricity etc need to be centrally planned and executed. you have to think of them at that scale. local optimization serves no purpose, because the supply/sink is not local.

locality based: Revenue earning mechanism at locality level

muni_blr - 9 April, 2008 - 13:04

I feel every locality should have its own revenue earning mechanism through renting out of commercial spaces and using the revenue to the improvemenet / maintaining of facilities and infrastructure. Transparent audit control of the finances can help things I feel.If I am planning a 1000 acre locality. I can ear mark some part of it ( 30 to 40 acres) for commercial development and the ownership with the government. The Local body will use the land to plan out the commercial actvity and generate revenue and can be accountable to the Govt and the people.The Govt can always involve the local representatives of  the locality while planning development activities involving the locality.Though the existing localities cannot use this model, future localities can benefit a lot if this thought is discussed right.Hurry HomeThe Sage

 

Locality based revenue - expanded to exisiting areas

santsub - 9 April, 2008 - 13:37

Good post Muni_blr - I was thinking on the same lines.. and I think the existing localities like all blocks of Jayanagar and all blocks of Rajajinagar & Malleswaram be declared separate corp limits and governing bodies who take care of revenues and upkeep of the cities. I know people will hate this but citybased tax can be collected to improve infrastructure and facilities.

This model has worked well in the US and thats the reason its so organized. Citizens will have their voice on most of the projects which will make it truly democratic. Anything goes on voting as far as Issues are concerned. My 2 cents on this.

going uber local

tsubba - 9 April, 2008 - 14:20

awesome posts folks. nobody can sit where ever he sits and impose and make generic predictions about what is good for whom. in the us it goes beyond all this. in the middle of the week, at 7:00 pm there are people who sit and debate every single change to the neighborhood. even the biggest corporation in the whole wide world cannot set shop without a decision by a majority of a very lower middle class community approving it. sat through some of these meetings. it just blew my mind, how much details and influence ordinary folks have. it is not that walmart does not try to twist arm. but the manifest idealism amongst locals is just way beyond belief.

wisdom from around the world

tsubba - 9 April, 2008 - 10:22

check out these series of documentaries
e2 economics of being environmentally concious
e2 design focuses on design aspects.

of all the episodes i saw, i found 'adaptive reuse in the netherlands' and 'bogota: building a sustainable city' very relevant for us. to see full length episodes, goto
http://www.design-e2.com/ --> click on webcasts, --> scroll down to e2 design season two. they also have a youtube channel, that contains only trailers & limited content podcasts.

Bogota story
trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71UhKAtGSik
naturally, the bogota story contains its proudest achievement its brts public transport. but what happenned at bogota goes beyond brts. penalosa talks about a lot of allied things, getting the shopkeepers to vacate footpaths, the need for public spaces and the mother of all public spaces the el provenir promenade. i have read about bogota a bit thanks to arun, but it was very interesting to see the man's angle to this. very interesting story. some things he says: people must walk like fishes swim, people have been walking for 5000 years, this is not a footpath, it is a park, i wanted public transport to be sexy. nobody takes buses in bogota they take the transmillenio.
a presentation arun sent me once.

Netherlands story
trailer:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XT77yaOKSLk
the netherlands story starts with 'despite being smaller than newengland and denser than japan, 80% of netherlands is farms and public spaces'. and then it goes on to discuss the tension between sprawl and space. what amazes me is the level of thinking, anticipation and attention to detail for a redevelopment project.
bda has got its approval for the massive kg layout. hopefully, they put some similar thought and foresight into this. if they manage to get the land, they have a blank slate.

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