Money down the pothole

The Karnataka government has allotted Rs 28,000 crore to Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) over the last six years, but given the poor state of the city’s infrastructure, the question is, where has all that money gone? Ironically, 60 per cent of this amount was spent on roadworks and flyovers. Surely, Bengaluru’s roads would not have been in the pathetic state that they are in now had indeed such a huge amount been invested on their upkeep.

Over the years, the city has become notorious for its potholes, with bad roads claiming several lives, besides inviting the ire of the High Court on many occasions. When Basavaraj Bommai took over as the Chief Minister in 2021, he had announced in the Legislative Council that Rs 20,000 crore had been spent on repairing roads in the preceding five years and that an inquiry would be conducted to fix responsibility on the officers concerned. Bommai said this in response to a question by MLC P R Ramesh, who had pointed out that up to Rs 2 crore was being spent on maintenance work alone for just a 1 km stretch of road.

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The Chief Minister also ordered an audit into the history of road works and monitoring of potholes and other road-related problems. Nothing has been heard about the inquiry or the audit since, but on the other hand, there have only been increasing complaints about corruption in the contracts, with the Karnataka State Contractors’ Association going public with their charge that they were being forced to pay 40 per cent commission to politicians and bureaucrats to obtain civil work contracts and clearance of bills.

With Assembly elections round the corner, the government has suddenly begun splurging on roads, giving the city a facelift. Why could not this be done before? Moreover, how long this coat of black-topping, which is being done only with elections in view, will last remains to be seen.

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Bengaluru, which is the highest contributor to the state’s exchequer with a lion’s share of the GSDP, deserves better. The huge amount invested should translate into world-class infrastructure, not a perpetual money-spinning machine for the corrupt. When the city cannot boast of even basic road infrastructure, doubts naturally arise as to whose pockets the large amounts of money spent are ending up in. With the BBMP lacking a credible internal audit mechanism and the government conveniently looking the other way, it is imperative that the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) should audit the civic body’s accounts. BBMP officers have had a free run for far too long, and unless the corrupt are identified and punished, the parlous state of the city’s infrastructure will soon reach a point of no return.