SF to show the way for clean and fast Bangalore

Thinking global, Bangalore’s administrators have realised, is the best way to tackle the seemingly local problems staring the city in the face. As a first move, the city’s civic agencies will be signing eight MoUs with their San Francisco counterparts here on Monday.

The Bangalore-San Francisco City Co-operation Programme has a plenty of give and take in it. The MoUs will help Bangalore benefit from San Francisco on solid waste and traffic management, while the former will pitch in to help the latter bring down its high cost of public healthcare.

A 55-member delegation from San Franciso, led by Mayor Gavin Newsom, is pitching camp in Bangalore from November 30 to firm up the deals. The delegation has met representatives of the state government including the chief minister, officials of various civic agencies, corporate honchos and educationists.

“Eighty-five per cent of our solid waste gets recycled. The water that we use is recycled and purified. We have adopted all means of transportation, right from the underground metro to cable cars, and even horse carriages. We hope that our best practices will be replicated by Bangalore,” said Madhav Mishra, CEO of Mishra Capital, who is on the San Francisco team

“The cost of healthcare is very high in San Francisco. In collaboration with Biocon, we are considering making it an affordable service,” said Regis B Kelly, Director, California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences.