Perverse face of Bangalore

MiD DAY reported yesterday how more pedestrians are killed in Bangalore than in any other Indian city.

And last night, I was among scores of pedestrians trying unsuccessfully to cross over from Koshy’s to the other side of St Mark’s Road. Escaping getting knocked down isn't easy. It happens all the time, and not just in ‘commercial’ areas.

How did this city, once considered a pensioners’ (and by extension pedestrians’) paradise, turn into a gruesome pedestrian killing zone? And why are our footpaths disappearing?

There’s money in widening roads, that’s why. Who profits? The contractor who widens the road. The corporators and ministers and other VIPs the contractor pays off. And the vehicle user, who was pushed into buying her vehicle possibly because she was too scared to walk.

It doesn't take an expert to tell us this city's policy makers are boorish, insensitive, and anti-pedestrian. But citizens are still grateful to Traffic Engineers and Safety Trainers, a voluntary forum, for collecting statistics to show that 42 of 100 victims of fatal road accidents in Bangalore are pedestrians.

The corresponding figures are 31 for Delhi and 24 for Mumbai. Kolkata, it seems, is the safest city for pedestrians, with just 11 of 100 road accident victims being pedestrians.

Many romanticise Bangalore, but it is a perverse city in many ways.

Here's why. Some years ago, when they built bus shelters in Bangalore, they made sure they had no benches. And then they also made sure no one sat on the bus stand wall by tapering its top into a sharp, upturned V. Only a sadist genius could have thought up such an idea.

Another example. Sudha Murty of Infosys nobly helped build public toilets, and they worked well for some time. But today, they keep strict office hours, and close sharply at 6 pm. And many have no water! Forget about electricity.

I could go on, but you know as well as I do what happens when they start a Metro project, or decide to build a flyover or underpass. They make it worse than it should be. They dig up a road, don't even out what remains of it, and watch with evil glee as thousands of motorists and pedestrians suffer through the hurdles.

Nobel laureate V S Naipaul describes Bangalore as a city without footpaths. But he doesn’t know why it is so. Here’s why: our corporators and ministers, and their friends in the contract and real estate business, are perverse. Not because they pocket our money – they do that everywhere in India – but because they take pleasure in our misery. They’re not just rascals, they're sick in the mind.