The 3 Major Woes of Living in Bengaluru
Women safety, stray dog menace to worse possible road and traffic situation
We recently returned to namma (our) Bengaluru, (The IT hub of India and the west) after a three-year-long stay in Germany. Relieved that we don’t have any more relocation plans in the near future, we re-did our house, and trying to settle in… Quite happy with the newly rented apartment, kids’ schools, furnishings et all… Our 9-year-old already has a handful of friends in the apartment, which is making her look forward to each day.
And soon reality strikes… the painful reminders of the sorry state of the city and the citizens of Namma Bengaluru; or should I say, Indian citizens’ situation in general?
Honestly, the job market in Bengaluru isn’t bad. Anyone with a decent skillset can get a job or fend for themselves. Thanks to its cosmopolitan population of more than eight million, the third most populated Indian city. But the major issues bothering the city are these three.
Women’s Safety
India has had an impending sad state of affairs in women and girls’ safety.
Today my daughter and her friend came running to me in panic. They were playing in the play area of our own apartment during the late afternoon. They looked shocked. And about to cry. My daughter said, a boy, probably in his early teens was at the gate of our apartment making inappropriate gestures and sounds at them. The security at the gate? happily asleep... As the girls raised an alarm the security woke up dazed and suddenly realizing what’s happening, shooed the intruder away.
While we’re taking steps to see it doesn't happen again, apathy looms.
Yesterday evening, I was taking a walk to mom’s place which is just about half a kilometer away, along with my toddler. I was wearing my workout clothes as I was planning to hit a run soon. The weather was awesome cool and that’s what Bangalore is blessed with. Spring/summer weather round the year.
Suddenly, my joy turned into an uncomfortable panic. I could see several pairs of eyes ogling at me on the way. At any street corner in India, you will almost always see one to many groups of men; some smoking and chatting and ogling. It will soon turn into eve-teasing if the street is lonely.
As I turned the corner much to my relief, I walked into yet another similar street. A street hawker started singing a vulgar song in a loud voice as I passed him startling me and my chid.
In Bengaluru, (or anywhere in India) it is but a necessity to teach kids some good martial arts for self-defense. The city was safer when I was a kid; honestly… As I grew up, the city became densely populated. I hated traveling in crowded public transportation. Getting pinched in the butt or the bust was a regular affair. Sometimes even the bus conductor who issued tickets was the culprit.
One leading Indian newspaper reports a 63% jump in the number of harassment and rape cases in the capital, New Delhi. WHO says globally 1 in 3 women globally experience violence, and the number hasn’t changed much in the past decade. When can the women actually feel free? When?
Stray Dogs and Cattle
In as recently as 2019, the Supreme Court of India banned the culling of stray dogs, saying, they too have a right to live. While they can attack and kill few humans, we cannot approve culling 35–40 million strays in India.
While the government says there is the ABC (Animal Birth Control) program in place, which sterilizes street dogs so they lose their ferociousness to a high degree and don’t multiply, the centers have been shut for Corona duty or something else since the past year, a friend told me. Most of the time, nobody even answers these calls in those centres, people lament.
As I continued on my half a kilometer journey, around eight stray puppies run around us as I held on to my little one, tight. A bunch of bigger mongrels lurking around a tiny eatery, made me utter prayers in my mind hoping it would just ignore us.
India accounts for 36% of all rabies deaths globally, reporting approximately 20,000 cases a year.
While dogs are considered man’s best friends, stray dogs are an exception. Stray dogs are scary to several like me. We don’t hate dogs but just don’t want to be bothered on the streets. We don’t have to be watchful about feeling attacked by a pack of hungry, unruly, or mad dogs. Don’t citizens warrant the right to safety? Can’t always take the car out, sorry!
Worst Road Conditions
One morning you find the the city municipal department BBMP(Brihat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike) laying the roads and within the next week, you’ll find someone digging up the roads. It could be the telephone department guy to lay a telephone line or the city water department who are been called to fix a leaky drain pipe running down the street. And once they're done, they leave the dug-up road to itself. It's not their business to re-lay roads, you see? It is left as it is. So Bengaluru is ridden with crater-sized potholes.
Citizens have taken creative paths to highlight this issue. Be it moon-walking dressed as an astronaut on one large crater, to posing as a mermaid on one water-filled pothole.
Pedestrian lanes are a rarity and often encroached by street hawkers or stores who think any space outside their shop is also theirs to display their wares.
Bengaluru has one of the world’s worse traffic jams according to TomTom’s traffic index. Driving just five kilometers has taken an hour in peak traffic for me.
So as we continued our walk, the streets were puddly with yesterday’s rainwater, so I had to do a couple of jumps to avoid a splash. But my toddler tried to jump into them as I wrestled him against it.
Oh Germany!, how I miss those long walks in the wald. A 5k run was a breeze.
The wald(forest), so well maintained for morning and evening joggers beckoned us with its old oak and long pine trees, complete with resting places. And the parks, pruned in the fall and well prepped during the spring-summer time with daffodils and numerous other flora. Children’s parks are so well set up, the swing, slides, play homes in wood, you name it.
Children’s parks in Bengaluru are far from anything kids would like to play. Rarely maintained, water clogged during rains, the cheap plastic slides and swings are often broken, scratched, or dirty. And weeds encompass the area during the rains, and if the area is a desolate spot, it’s not hard to see those slithery guests. Many parks are unfit for use and can hurt kids.
The corporators are busy fighting their own political wars to bother about maintaining roads, let alone parks for its citizens who voted for them. You can’t get a property registered without paying a bribe in Bengaluru. But that’s for another day. Complaints are for just deaf ears.
I love Bengaluru, being born and brought up here, and love the city’s cosmopolitan culture, the awesome weather, the convenience of being a localite. But when will we start feeling safer to even walk without feeling watched?
What can we do to make Bengaluru safe again? Ah, I heard a Mooo.. looks like this stray cow walking on the street here has something to say?
P.S: Oh, I know we are 1000% safer here in India, than in Afghanistan. (My heart goes out to the innocents there and I pray for them and hope they don’t suffer so much.) But India is well… very far from any developed country; and we are indeed a developing country for centuries now!
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