Changing cityscape
G. Ananthakrishnan
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History of India's Silicon Valley's sudden rise to metropolitan status
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THE PROMISE OF THE METROPOLIS — Bangalore's Twentieth Century: Janaki Nair; Oxford University Press, YMCA Library Building, Jai Singh Road, New Delhi-110001. Rs. 750.
Contrary to their predictable external contours, cities have a complex underlying character, affecting various classes of residents in ways that are often not immediately visible. In the Indian context, cities usually appear to be an aggregation of intractable elements that are perpetually in conflict and chaos. There were peaceful city-sized enclaves too that were sought by many, often as a retirement abode. Everyone readily recognises these sylvan, welcoming and affluent cities: Bangalore in the South and Pune in the North.
The transformation
Janaki Nair forcefully rejects this consumption-driven vision of a city, as a salubrious and squalor-free sanctuary guaranteeing happiness and prosperity in this book. As a city that has rapidly transited to metropolitan status in a few decades, Bangalore's terrain has transformed in ways that have sharply affected the fortunes of distinct groups of residents.
Urban historians meticulously document the changing cityscapes but often give superficial treatment to the underlying processes in their narratives. This account of Bangalore, however, devotes itself totally to the demolition of the facile assumption that all classes of people share in the prosperity of a city as it traces a growth curve.
The book, in its physical context, dwells sharply on Kempegowda's 16th Century A.D. settlement that, over time, annexed vast neighbourhoods to become Bengaluru, and then transformed into a public sector powerhouse and finally into the city of silicon. Beneath the city's material frame are the more significant and less visible "mental-imaginative" confines of the metropolis.
So what does Bangalore, like any other comparable city mean to various classes of residents?
Development paradigm
Throughout the book, Nair develops the thesis aided by a great deal of supportive literature, that an increasingly illiberal development paradigm has taken hold of the processes of governance over time, culminating in a technocratic vision for Bangalore that casts the city in the image of Singapore.
At the heart of the contradiction between the two cities lies the conflicting interpretation of democracy. As the author argues, Bangalore must fulfil its democratic obligation to all its citizens and qualify for honourable mention among free cities, without carving up its spaces among more vocal and influential citizens. The fallacy of the Singapore model is further exposed by the lack of commitment to develop in Bangalore, unlike in the case of the island state, a strong public housing programme.
The fund of academic research findings gives this book the freedom to be unsparing in its evaluation of leading personalities involved in the shaping of Bangalore. Thus, in Nair's deconstruction of the architectural evolution of the city, Kengal Hanumanthiah appears as a leader with a needlessly grandiose and extravagant vision, pushing ahead with plans to build a formidable Vidhana Soudha in the austere 1950s; more recent city-development initiatives such as the Bangalore Agenda Task Force (BASF) — which enjoyed the former Chief Minister S. M. Krishna's support— Janaagraha and the Bangalore Urban Arts Commission begin to reflect an elitist foundation that is at odds with rights-based aspirations of a significant number of the city's residents.
Many middle class residents are bound to argue that their aspirations for a better quality of life, including the possession of comfortable housing are universal and legitimate; In a normative understanding of democracy, such an argument would appear to be legitimate, but Nair refutes such a notion in the case of Bangalore with the well-documented finding that the sense of ownership of the city frequently persuades official agencies such as the Bangalore Development Authority to favour the wealthy at the cost of rule of law; building norms are bent to suit speculation in land.
Restrictions imposed on public protests in parks and prominent places indicate the further hardening of attitudes to preserve a certain way of life in the face of assertive democratic displays. In comparison, the "illegalities of the poor" as the author views them, are visited by severe action and removal from places of residence, sometimes to facilitate the rich.
Violations
The author marshals evidence to show that the Information Technology sector, the modern economic powerhouse in the public perception, was responsible for 70 of 132 violations in an important zone in the Koramangala IT corridor.
The Promise of the Metropolis documents exhaustively, the rise of collective labour activity in Bangalore starting with the setting up of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited and Indian Telephone Industries. In the end, the book is a rich academic enterprise, polemical in parts, that has yielded a very readable critique of a young metropolis that is grappling with the fundamental question of equal rights for all its citizens.
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