Deal ya No-Deal?
I was reading this editorial piece written by Vir Sanghvi for Hindustan Times and I realised that this could be true about Bangalore too! Is Bangalore getting the right deal or not?
After the Bombay floods last year, everyone woke up to the realisation that though Bombay pays Rs 60,000 crore in taxes every year, it gets back only Rs 1,000 crore for infrastructure. That statistic is shocking enough. But it was only after I moved to Delhi and was able to see how much money was spent on South Delhi that I realised what a bad deal South Bombay really gets.
Bangalore does have a right to information initiative. What does it take for us to find out – out of the total tax that the city contributes to the state’s coffers… how much comes back as infrastructure fund? We really have to know and get this to the attention of all the citizens. Atleast then we will know how effective is the government with respect to infrastructure development.
I do not have to mention anything at all about the way those civil contracts are executed. That is another subject by itself and Inner Ring Road – Airport Road Flyover is a remarkable case to be studied.
Hi RC,
Thats a very good poser of a question : how much gets ploughed back?!
Cheers,
Ravi
Intriguing. But then, this is one of the disadvantages of a centralized system of governance.
One can even identify a conflict-of-interest here. The bureaucrats and politicians at the centre will of course be more interested in developing Delhi over other cities, given that they live in Delhi.
And at the state level, smaller cities and towns suffer due to the primacy given to the state capital.
The flyover on the IRR is held-up as the parties – Karnataka govt, UP Building Corp(I think that’s its name) went to the court – and there has been a stay and resulting delay in the work. Ironically the reason for the dispute was cost-overrun, and delay.