We need transparency

It has taken a while to figure this out and one may be pardoned for being a bit slow on the uptake. What has become increasingly clear is that state policy is actually being enforced by the courts as the executive seems to be incapable of formulating a scheme or a policy that is sound and capable of standing on a legal footing. This sounds like positioning the constitutional mechanism in the country on its head but that is where matters rest.

A shortlist of policies or schemes of the state going before the higher courts would be in order to understand how state policy appears extremely ill-advised and the courts are called upon to determine what is in accordance with law and in public interest. The latest in this list is, of course, the BBMP election. It has been nearly 10 years since the city witnessed a civic body election. Since state policy seems to be aimed at delaying it further, the issue has gone up and down between the high court and the Supreme Court, and still hovers there despite pretty strong observations by the high court bench.
Likewise, the issue of the medium of instruction in schools. Although courts have repeatedly said that the right to learn in English cannot be taken away, the state and a fairly large body of Kannada writers are opposed to it. You may say the law is settled now but the state does not seem to think so and wants to use as many legal devices as it can to delay implementing court decisions.
These cases might be pretty complex but one thought the Metro project was past all this. Not so. It appears that the builders of the Metro, who have reduced MG Road to an elevated rail track, had not told those who were concerned where the two ends of these rail tracks would go. The Karnataka State Cricket Association (KSCA) was surprised to find out that it would lose a portion of the Chinnaswamy Stadium to the tracks and has now filed a petition.
It is much more surprising for the rest of us than the KSCA, because one thought the Metro authorities would have properly and legally notified every stakeholder likely to be affected by the project. If that was the case, the KSCA would not have had to approach the courts for a stay order now to halt the Metro construction work at their corner. The KSCA says the current alignment of the Metro is not what it was told originally. The courts will obviously find out who is telling the truth but this seems to be another instance of the state’s inability to do something reasonably straightforward in a transparent manner.
Similarly, although there is enough material available in the public domain for management students to do a complete case study on the NICE project, there are still many grey areas that raise doubts on transparency. For instance, although the government keeps insisting on letting the project proceed in accordance with the court directive, it does not say with any clarity whether it would stick to the original agreement on the extent of land to be acquired and given to the company. Lack of such clarity creates scope for doubts about the intention of the state and causes heartburn, for instance in the case of HD Deve Gowda who seems to bent upon creating roadblocks for this highway project.
All said and done, the former prime minister is no fool to sit on a dharna to oppose a project he himself initiated. He would not do so unless he was convinced that there was some deviation. As long as these doubts persist, there is little hope for the NICE corridor between Bangalore and Mysore.
There are several examples from elsewhere in the country where these issues, particularly acquisition of land and adequate compensation, were sorted out pretty fast. Hyderabad does not seem to have the kind of problems that Bangalore has in acquiring land in the city for infrastructure. Since money for urban development does not seem to be a major concern — the government was ready to spend Rs12,000 crore on Bangalore — a proper mechanism based on best practices elsewhere in the country, or for that matter in the world, may be the answer.
The BDA, which acquired lands for forming layouts 10 years ago, seemed to have found a fair formula of giving compensation and sites to the land owners. Even that has gone for a toss because of the current expectation of market value.
Unless a mechanism is in place to deal with this issue, one may forget further orderly development of layouts in Bangalore. Dismal as it might sound, you will have only private layouts, formed by the powerful in revenue pockets, with little regard to urban planning.
    e.raghavan@gmail.com