Well, as luck would have it, the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) released the draft of the Regional Master Plan 2031 (RMP 2031) just one week after I left from my 4-month fellowship. I had spent several hours at the BDA waiting to speak with planning officials, and up until the last week, there was no indication of when the draft plan would be released to the public. On November 24, 2017, the BDA issued a public notice (where?) that the plan was available for public comment for 60 days.

The process for planning RMP 2031 began more than 2 years ago, when the BDA  outsourced the preparation of the plan to a Netherlands-based company Royal Haskoning DHV. Much of the work was largely to collect critical GIS, remote sensing and survey data that would be used as inputs to the plan. In January 2017, the BDA had a series of 8 public consultations to review preliminary visions or scenarios that would guide the plan. As of today (Nov 27), there are no public consultations scheduled, but various citizen groups are starting to encourage their networks to participate during the comment period.

I spent my time in Bangalore interviewing stakeholders from various domains of civil society on how they viewed the the city’s master plan. While there is overwhelming desire for a long-term comprehensive plan to better manage the growing city, the process for preparing RMP 2031 has been fraught with contestation. So during these next 60 days, the questions revolve around:

1. How organized are citizen’s groups towards building consensus to formulate their comments into actionable revisions that the BDA will not easily dismiss?
2. How will the master plan impact each ward during implementation? How do wards uniquely need to be prepared?
3. In general, how will the plan be implemented? And how will Bangalore residents be able to track progress?

Since the data collected for my research through semi-structure interviews between September and November 2017  provides extremely recent opinions on the master plan, I thought it would be of value to let the voices of the interviewees be available for everyone during this 60-day comment period. I hope it’s useful for all the people I met who are so passionate about their city.

Bangaloreans Want a Master Plan

The most evident sentiment from multi-sector stakeholders in Bangalore was that people wanted their city to be better planned.

“You can say growth is a problem or a blessing in disguise. But it’s the way it is managed that is the problem. We are not building the city, it’s like it’s being built on its own. And things are not coordinated. Like land development is not connected to transportation planning. Unless you have control over who is building where and how, you will not solve any problem in this city.” (Community-Based Organization)

“They are all fire-fighting all the time. It makes me tired to see all the Whatsapp messages all the time. It’s sad that everyone is struggling on a daily basis to get the potholes filled, the garbage guy to collect garbage. It’s not just urban planning or the delivery of urban services, there are violations of everything. Everyone is just trouble-shooting and fire-fighting all the time, we don’t have the time and space to think about what this place needs in the future.” (Local Planner)

“The [master] plan could be relevant, but not the way it’s going around. It has to be relevant. It has to be done in a better way.” (Non-Governmental Organization)

…But They Are Not Sure RMP 2031 is Their Plan

This master plan for Bangalore is mire with legal ambiguities. The State of Karnataka Town and Country Planning Act, enacted in 1961, gave the authority to the Bangalore Development Corporation (established in 1976) to plan for the larger area. The BDA has created previous master plans from 1985, 1995 and 2015. However, the 74th Amendment of the Indian Constitution, adopted in 1992, called for the establishment of a Metropolitan Planning Committee (MPC) to plan for all metropolitan areas in the country and required more local participation in the planning process particularly through ward committees. The MPC for Bangalore was only constituted in 2014, after the RMP 2031 was started per the State Planning Act, and in the past 3 years has only met formally twice. So the BDA is technically mandated to do a plan for Bangalore, and the MPC may or may not be in any capacity to even review the plan, let alone conduct a planning process itself.

“The State has legally said that …that the BDA should do the plan, but it goes against the spirit of the 74th Amendment. Therefore, we have to have a lot of negotiation and conversation with the government to change these things.” (Consultant)

“Complying with the letter of the law is quite easy without ever coming close to the spirit of the law. They’ll make up the argument that is convenient to the proposition they are pushing forward. There are lawyers who will acquiesce to this, there are planners who will acquiesce to the master planning process.” (Citizen Activist)

There is also a lack of legitimacy regarding who is involved and how the process is slated to proceed. 

“Who are they [BDA] to create a plan for my city?” (Citizen Activist)

“It might be the MPC that acts as the review committee. But there is a conflict of interest. The plan has been prepared by the BDA which is headed by the Chief Minister of KN and cannot be reviewed by the MPC that is also headed by the CM.” (Consultant)

Even though planning for RMP 2031 has been going on for several years, the predominantly closed process has left many people wondering who the plan is really for. 

“It’s basically a supply-driven planning mechanism. Planning authorities supply what they think is good for the city. This conception of what they think is good for the city is not informed by any of the other governmental agencies nor the private sector agencies nor any of the other non-state actors in a formal institutionalized manner.” (Local Planner)

“We have participated in the MP consultations that have happened in different zones. …We spoke, we were one of many stakeholders. We have given our submissions and hopefully they’ll get acted upon. The problem with the MP process is that none of the feedback given are formally documented and closed.” (Non-Governmental Organization)

Finally, the style of planning appears to be rather technocratic in the sense that the government officials and consultants are employing sophisticated data analysis and best practices. That implies that the voices of citizens must “compete” and rise to the level of expertise to be on equal footing. 

“Ultimate it is based on the strength of the development authority. The governmental agency will try to accommodate the interests of the citizens as much as possible. So if I get 20,000 objections to my draft master plan, i can only accommodate a portion of them. These are all genuine demands. Many times what happens is planning is not done by actually visiting those areas. Somebody sitting at the table will decide something.” (Government Official)

“Now i think there will be a lot of noise when we open up the plan. It will influence some of the decisions in the plan. I feel that it can certainly if it is channelized properly. It is voiced properly, framed properly, it can definitely have an impact on the plan. But if it is just noise, just anecdotal noise, where there is no evidence to back up the noise, then it won’t have an impact.” (Consultant)