Bangalore/ Bengaluru
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Bangalore, 1908
This article has been extracted from THE IMPERIAL GAZETTEER OF INDIA , 1908. OXFORD, AT THE CLARENDON PRESS. |
Note: National, provincial and district boundaries have changed considerably since 1908. Typically, old states, ‘divisions’ and districts have been broken into smaller units, units, and many tahsils upgraded to districts.Many units have since been renamed. Therefore, this article is being posted mainly for its historical value.
The seat of government of the Mysore State, and
head-quarters of the Bangalore Brigade of the Indian army, situated in
12° 58' N. and 77 35' E., 219 miles by rail from Madras, and 692 from
Bombay. Total population (1901), 159,046. It covers an area of
25 square miles, and is composed of two separate but adjacent parts :
Bangalore city (the Petta, Pete, or original native town of Bangalore
proper), under the Mysore State ; and the Civil and Military Station
(formerly called the cantonment), an ' assigned ' tract under British
administration through the Resident at Mysore.
Bangalore city has been largely extended of recent years, especially since the outbreak of plague in 1898, and now covers an area of n to 12 square miles, extending from the Imperial Service Lancer lines in the north to the Bull temple in the south, a distance of 7 miles, and from Cubbon Park in the east to Chamrajpet in the west, about 4 miles. The population during the last thirty years has been : (187 1) 60,703, (1881) 62,317, (1891) 80,285, and (1901) 69,447; the decrease since 1891 is due to plague. Hindus number 57,000, Musalmans 8,500, and Christians 3,200; of the rest, 565 are Animists.
The city is divided into nine municipal divisions : namely, Palace, Balepete, Manivartapete, Halsurpete, Nagartapete, Lai Bagh, Fort, Basavangudi, and Mallesvaram. The municipal board is composed of a president, five other ex-officio and five nominated members, appointed by the State, and thirteen elected members. The privilege of election was granted in 1892. The income and expenditure during the ten years ending 1901 averaged i-6 lakhs. In 1903-4 the income was 2-4 lakhs, including octroi (Rs. 55,000), house tax (Rs. 42,000), and tolls (Rs. 22,000). The expenditure was 2\ lakhs, the chief items being Rs. 87,000 for public works, Rs. 35,000 for conservancy, and Rs. 33,000 for charitable grants and education.
The name is properly Bengaluru, the uru or ' town ' of bengalu or 'beans.' The Hoysala king Vira Ballala, it is said, became separated from his attendants when hunting and was benighted. Faint and weary, he came upon a solitary hut, in which was an old woman, who could give him only some bengalu or beans boiled in a little water. Sharing this humble fare with his horse, he passed the night at the hut. The incident soon became known, and the urn or village which sprang up was called the Bengal-uru. It was situated to the north, beyond Kodigehalli, and is now known as Old or Hale Bengaluru. Bangalore was founded in 1537 by Kempe Gauda, the chief of Yelahanka, and a watch-tower at each of the cardinal points marks the limits to which it was predicted it would extend, a prophecy now more than fulfilled. The first extension was Chamrajpet, from the fort westwards, in 1892.
In 1899 were added the Basavangudi extension, south from the fort, and the Mallesvaram extension, north from the city railway station. The fort, which lies south of the original town, has not been used for any military purpose since 1888. First constructed of mud, it was enlarged and built of stone in 1761, under Haidar All, captured by the British in 1791, subsequently dismantled by Tipu Sultan, but restored in 1799. The walls have now been pierced for roads, a part pulled down, and the moat filled up, providing a site for the Victoria Hospital.
The most important buildings included in the city are the Maharaja's Palace to the north, and the range of public offices in Cubbon Park. East from the fort is the Lai Bagh, or State Botanical gardens, which date from the time of Haidar Ah. The Central College is the principal educational institution, and a site to the north of the city has been selected for the Indian Institute of Research for post-graduate study, founded from Mr. Tata's endowment. On the west of the city are large spinning and manufacturing mills, woollen, cotton, and silk-mills, oil-mills and soap factory, brick and tile works ; southwards, a silkworm farm under Japanese management ; and to the south-west, the distillery. Near the city railway station are loco- motive workshops and an iron foundry. Near the cantonment railway station are large coffee-curing works, where also artificial manures are prepared.
The water-supply, which was provided in 1896, is pure and abundant. The water is drawn from the Hesarghatta tank on the Arkavati, 13 miles to the north-west, and pumped to the top of a small hill at Banavar, whence it runs by gravitation through cast-iron pipes to settling and filtering beds near the city, and thence to a subterranean reservoir at the race-course, from which it is distributed to all parts. The daily supply provided is a million gallons. The drainage of the city is collected into one main channel, which runs out from the southern side of the old town and is continued as far as the Sunnakal tank, a distance of 2 or 3 miles, where the sewage is applied to agricultural purposes. Since 1905 the city has been lighted by electricity trans- mitted from the Cauvery Falls at Sivasamudram, and power from the same source works the woollen and cotton-mills.
The Civil and Military Station of Bangalore adjoins the city on the east, and covers an area of 13 square miles, extending from the Residency on the west to Binnamangala on the east, about 4 miles, and from the Tanneries on the north to Agram on the south, about 5 miles. It is intended to remove the sapper lines to a new site on the north-west, which will allow of the congested parts being opened out by an extension northwards, similar measures in Bangalore city and Mysore having virtually freed those cities from plague. The population at each Census in the last thirty years has been : (1871)81,810, (i 88 1) 839,540, (1891) 100,081, and(i9oi) 89,599. The decrease since 1891 is due chiefly to plague, but also partly to the absence of troops in 1901 at the seats of war in South Africa and China. By religion there are 51,000 Hindus, 21,500 Musalmans, and 17,000 Christians. The can- tonment was established in 1809 on the removal here of the British garrison from Seringapatam, which had proved too unhealthy for the troops. But the head-quarters were at first in the fort, where also the principal Europeans lived. The name ' cantonment ' was applied till 1 88 1. On the rendition of Mysore in that year, the area was made over to the British as an ' assigned ' tract, and under the present designation became subject to the administration of the Resident. The garrison includes three batteries of artillery, and regiments of British cavalry and infantry, Native cavalry, sappers and miners, pioneers, and Native infantry (2), mounted infantry, supply and transport corps, and mule corps. There are, besides, the Bangalore Rifle Volunteers ; and, in Bangalore city, under the jurisdiction of the Darbar, the Mysore Imperial Service Lancers transport corps and the Mysore Barr infantry.
The Station municipal board is composed of 6 ex-officio and 18 non- official members, the latter being elected, with the District Magistrate as president. There are six divisions or wards : Halsur (Ulsoor), Southern, East General Bazar, West General Bazar, Cleveland Town, and High Ground. The elected commissioners are so apportioned among them as to represent the several classes in each. There are thus 6 Europeans and Eurasians, 4 Muhammadans, and 8 Hindus and others. The income and expenditure during the ten years ending 1901 averaged 3-2 lakhs. In 1903-4 the income was 3^7 lakhs, including 2-4 lakhs from rates and taxes, and Rs. 85,000 from rents and fees.
The expenditure was 3-5 lakhs, the chief items being 1-3 lakhs for public works, and 1-2 lakhs for the medical and health department. The water-supply is drawn from the same source as for the city, namely, the Hesarghatta tank, but by an independent system of pumping-works, filter-beds, and pipes, to a reservoir on the High Ground. The daily supply is calculated at a million and a half gallons. The drainage of a large area of the Station is carried by a sewer passing through a tunnel to some distance beyond Halsur, where it is applied to cultivation. The most noticeable public buildings are the Residency, the District offices, and the Bowring Institute.
The ' assigned ' tract occupied by the Civil and Military Station is under the control of the Resident, and is provided with the various departments of administration separate from those of the Mysore State. Revenue work is performed by the Collector and District Magistrate. For police there is a Superintendent, with 39 officers and 238 con- stables. The police jurisdiction extends also over railways (327 miles), for which purpose there are 18 additional officers and 118 men.
The criminal courts include the bench of honorary magistrates, the courts of the second magistrate, who is the officer in charge of the Resident's treasury, of the Railway first-class magistrate, who is the Superin- tendent of railway police, of the District Magistrate, and of the Sessions Judge, who is the First Assistant Resident. The District Judge exercises civil jurisdiction, under the control of the Resident's Court, which is the High Court for the station, for both criminal and civil purposes. There is no separate jail, prisoners under sentences not exceeding one year's imprisonment being detained in the Bangalore Central jail of the Mysore State, while others are sent to jails in the Madras Presi- dency. The medical institutions are under the Residency Surgeon ; and the educational institutions, most of which are aided (60 with 4,877 pupils), are under the departmental control of the Director of Public Instruction, Madras.
The revenue of the 'assigned' tract in 1903-4 was nearly 7^ lakhs, and the expenditure exceeded 7f lakhs.
History
The Times of India, May 27, 2016
Rohith BR
On an auspicious day in 1537, Kempe Gowda, the founder of Bengaluru, got two pairs of bullocks to plough the ground where the Avenue Road stands today. While one pair ploughed east to west, the other pair went from north to south, thus marking the four main streets for the upcoming town. Along these streets and sub-lanes, developed various petes (markets). Gradually, the area developed into a town attracting people from many corners.
When architect Naresh Narasimhan went in search of the spot where it all began, there was a shocker waiting for him. "The place is in a shambles. The place today is called Doddapete Circle and spot is the junction of Doddapete (present Avenue Road) and Chikkapete (present Chickpet) roads. This should be the place where the bullocks began ploughing the ground according to the legend. There are four tower-like structures which must have been built later to highlight the importance of the place, but nobody has details about them though they have a beautiful architecture. And all these structures are in a bad shape," he said.
There exist three of the four structures crumbling. One of them holding a commercial establishments is comparatively better. "We don't know the significance of these structures. We are just doing business in the area for many decades now. Recently, some locals painted these structures to give a new look," said Syed Pasha, a shopkeeper in the area. Naresh said he has highlighted the importance of reclaiming the heritage structure in and around Chickpet at many forums but there has been no response from the government. "There are several buildings of heritage value here but nobody is doing anything to safeguard them. The government should at least take over the four towers at the Doddapete Circle and convert the space into a museum to highlight the story of how Bengaluru was born. This will also be a tribute to the city's founders," he said.
How the Startup capital got its start?
- Kempe Gowda, also known as Hiriya Kempe Gowda, was a feudal ruler under the Vijayanagara Empire
- His vision for the city included fort, farms, petes (markets), tanks (water reservoirs) and temples so that people of all trades and professions to live there
- Various blocks in the town and streets had demarcations — for business for residential areas.
- Even in the business areas, there was clear differentiation based on goods sold there. This is the reason we find names like Akkipete (rice), Ragipete (millet), Aralepete (Cotton pet) etc.
Trivia
Adapted from IndiaToday
1. Attara Kacheri, a landmark, was saved from demolition by the first PIL filed before the Karnataka High Court in 1985
2. Springfest, an annual festival of Christ College, began in the 1970s and was later replaced by a festival named after a Nirvana song
3. Lido, a Bangalore theatre inaugurated around the year 1965, tarted the 70 mm vogue in Karnataka with a screening of Cleopatra
4. Chitchat, a 1980s hangout, in the former EGK building, is likely to be spotted in movies of the period such as Mani Ratnam’s Pallavi Anupallavi
5. The Elgin Flour Mills, a 1932 red-brick structure on Hosur Road, made way for an apartment complex in the ’90s
6. Galaxy Theatre, a now-defunct Residency Road establishment, set up in 1971, offered patrons the view of an artificial brook flowing over a bed of pebbles as they ascended a walkway carpeted in red
7. Plaza Theatre was established by two brothers in 1936 after they visited Britain to see how such buildings were designed
8. Thom’s Café was the restaurant off Promenade Road that served as a hangout for students of the ’70s and now survives as the name of a BMTC bus-stop
9. Olivia Newton-John and Elton John were the names of the toilets at Black Cadillac. Thus did the female lead of Grease and a musician, whose real name was Reginald Dwight, find immortality of a dubious sort in Bangalorean memory
10. The Public Utility Building, a Bangalore landmark, was built on the site where the Bangalore Library had stood since 1813
Black magic
Kavita Patil, Mar 6, 2017, Bengaluru: IT capital or black magic capital?, The Times of India
HIGHLIGHTS
Bengaluru has a thriving market for black magicians and sorcerers.
The clientele include, not just the lovelorn youths, but even corporate employees, race car drivers, all apparently a well-educated lot.
Bengaluru may boast of being the `IT Capital' or `Science Capital' of the country, but the city has a thriving market for black magicians and sorcerers who claim powers and `skills' to inflict an evil eye on the prosperity of people, or even inflict mortal injury.And the clientele include, not just the lovelorn youths, but even corporate employees, race car drivers and those reeling under family and financial crises - all apparently a well-educated lot.
The demand for black magic is evident from numerous people operating online who are contacted by clients through their individual portals and even social media platforms. They order black magic rituals to be performed on target individuals groups as per specific requirements, and they don't mind paying anywhere from a mere Rs 500 to even upwards of a lakh.
There are also a couple of Kerala-based tantriks operating through their `agents' who facilitate initial pujas and then direct people to meet black magic experts in Kerala to perform more complex rituals - a sort of a package. The arrest of a 33-year-old woman from Gowripalaya in the city for allegedly instructing her clients to murder a little girl, aged just 10, to allow the black magic woman to perform black magic rituals with her body, has come as a shocker over the dark extremes that these self-proclaimed conduits of so-called supernatural powers indulge in.
The woman, hailing from a seemingly normal lower-middleclass family, has five children, and is married to a man engaged in grillwork. "She used to operate from her (Gowripalya) residence in Bengaluru and was brought to Magadi where the murder and rituals took place. We are now probing whether she is involved in any other similar incidents in the past," said HL Nandish, circle inspector, Magadi, Ramanagar district. When Bangalore Mirror did a quick online check, contacting some of the listed black magicians in the city and asked for their services we realised it was a thriving industry, the returns oscillating from RS 500 to lakhs depending on the background of the client and the nature of the ritual required to be performed. A black magic expert in the city, who wanted to remain anonymous, claimed he has been into it for the last three decades. "There are different kinds of services we have. It all depends on what the client wants. We need basic details like date of birth and a picture and also details about the problem. We operate in houses and we have two of them, one is located in Indiranagar and another in Rajajinagar. We are open from morning 9am to 9pm.But if you don't want to come then you can WhatsApp us the details or send us a mail through our website," he said.
Another black magic specialist from Banaswadi claimed he has been active in the city for the last 40 years, serving clients from corporate and political circles.
He admitted that a majority of the clients come for performing Vashikaran kriya - enticing someone into doing things as required by the client.
He claimed that in recent years he was constantly encountering bad luck on the tracks as his vehicle used to conk off 700 metres from the finishing line or develop some last-minute technical glitch. He said his friends have suggested him to meet a tantrik and he performed some rituals as instructed.
"I paid Rs 10,000 and everything was fine about that. He did some rituals and prayer recitation and then I felt better after that.Now I am fine and looking forward to participating in the upcoming car races," he said.
Books
India’s biggest market for books
Bangalore is the new Kolkata
Sujit John,TNN | Jan 24, 2014
The IT capital has less than half the population of the Delhi National Capital Region and Mumbai. It's smaller than Kolkata. Yet, it's today the biggest market for books in India. And publishers say it has among the most sophisticated and discerning readers.
For Flipkart, India's biggest bookseller, Bangalore accounts for its biggest sales, followed by Mumbai and Delhi. For rival online retailer Amazon, Bangalore is a clear leader, followed by Hyderabad and then Mumbai. The company says in the past six months, Bangalore has contributed almost twice in terms of units sold as compared to Hyderabad.
For Hachette India, which publishes brands like John Grisham, Asterix, Enid Blyton, Stephen King, and Robert Ludlum, Bangalore accounts for 16%-18% of its all-India business. "This would be the picture by and large for trade publishers," says Thomas Abraham, MD, Hachette India. "For a single city, that is incredibly high. Mumbai would follow Bangalore, and Delhi next; the business from these other cities would be 2-3 percentage points lower than from Bangalore."
He says Bangalore is today what Kolkata was some decades ago. The West Bengal capital was once the hub of literature and literary activities, including the legendary Kolkata Book Fair that's said to be the most attended book fair in the world. "Kolkata's fallen off hugely. People there hardly buy books anymore. The number of stores has barely changed in the past 50 years," he says.
Bangalore too has seen some stores close. But it has also seen the addition of many, despite the onslaught of online retailers. Sapna Book House has been expanding. Newer, special interest stores have emerged like The Entertainment Store on Church Street for comics and collateral, and Light Room in Cox Town and Kutoohala in Basavanagudi for children's books. Bangalore perhaps has the highest children's-only stores anywhere, and those with a big focus on children's books like Atta Galatta and Bookstop, both in Koramangala.
Most attribute this phenomenon to the emergence of Bangalore as a city with a strong base of young, working professionals over the past decade, thanks to the IT revolution. "Disposable incomes are high, and people are electronically well connected (to make online purchases)," says Anand Padmanabhan, head of sales, Penguin India. For Penguin's sales through physical stores, Delhi and Mumbai are its top markets, but Padmanabhan says Bangalore could be the top market for online retail.
Anil Goteti, director-digital, Flipkart, says Bangalore's most comfortable buying online, and that partly explains why it's at the top of its book sales.
Aroon Raman, a Bangalore-based entrepreneur, who has published two thrillers in the past two years, with his biggest sales coming from Bangalore, says the young and affluent in the city love thrillers that are quick reads. "Books sell like consumer products in Bangalore. But I think it's still Kerala and West Bengal that treat books in a personalized way; that's where literary fiction like those of Shashi Deshpande and Arundhati Roy work best," he says.
Abraham says he judges a city's vibrancy by the quality and depth of stock of its second-hand bookstores. "Bangalore is taking on the mantle once held by Kolkata with its Free School Street and Chennai with Moore Market. In most cities, used bookstores predominantly keep textbooks or surplus stocks. In Bangalore, Blossom, Bookworm and others around Church Street are easily the best used bookstores in India. It's not just the ubiquitous bestseller but the rarity that one will find. I built back my Richard Armour and classic comics collection from here. I've even found a couple of great first edition rarities like Gone with the Wind," he says.
Mayi Gowda, who started Blossom in 2001 after being a roadside vendor of books to pay off his engineering college fees, uses a network of raddi (scrap) pickers in Mumbai, Chennai and Delhi to find rare books much sought after by his customers. "These raddi pickers have some idea of which books are good. I sometimes tell them what I need," says Gowda.
Premier Bookshop; Srinivasan
Sugata Srinivasaraju, May 11, 2021: The Times of India
TS Shanbhag, about 82, who died of Covid, ran the iconic Premier Bookshop, all of 600 sq feet, at the intersection of Church Street and Museum Road. Nobody thought he would ever be short of breath because he had survived his claustrophobic shop for nearly four decades. He was a familiar presence in many of Bangalore’s childhoods, youth and adulthood. He was not as gregarious as Srinivasan but led many to perceive that there was a special variety of dry warmth in his absent repartee. Those who had stubbornly engaged Shanbhag in a conversation for years would know he was intensely shy, and as historian Ramachandra Guha described in a January 2003 column, The Wrath of Grapes, he was “reticent, but slyly witty”. There was a frown that sat on his brow and you knew when it eased.
Premier Bookshop became iconic because it formed a narrow triangle with the British Council Library and Koshy’s restaurant or Parade Cafe. People who came to the bookshop went there, and those who went there walked down for a minute to his shop. The three institutions, of which only one remains now, created a liberal atmosphere in a quaintly happy and laid-back Bangalore. For decades, Shanbhag would religiously half-down his shutters at 3 pm to cross over to Koshy’s for a coffee. Where, too, he did not chatter but listened without a frown. In an infectious chattering hole, Shanbhag’s serenity was unusual. When he was away at Koshy’s, his assistants - who looked frail, like some spines of old, languishing books - had their lunch in the shop’s cramped attic.
Interestingly, we are remembering these two booksellers, over a decade after they ceased to be booksellers. They were all over in the media on the day and day after they passed away. Srinivasan even made it to the cover of a Kannada magazine. That should tell something about their presence, which they never asserted, and influence they never claimed. Srinivasan stopped selling books around 2006 after his sister, a professor of Zoology, was affected by multiple sclerosis. Neither of them was married. A man who had been a mobile bookshop for a half-century, which he called half-seriously as ‘Nation Builders’ (his legs were the pillars, of course), did not step out of his house after that. He had four brothers and a sister. Two brothers were married but were childless, and the remaining two and the sister never tied the knot. With the passing away of Srinivasan, the last to go in the family, and without progeny to preserve anything, they seem to have tragically evaporated into a gene-less recall.
Shanbhag shut his shop in February 2009 after selling all his books at a 60 per cent discount. It was almost giving it away for free. In all its time, his shop was a 20 per cent discount place. The discount started with 10 per cent, and if the customer became a regular, it got upgraded to 20. Shanbhag’s hand had the elegance and hurry of a physician with which he wrote on his yellow cash bill ‘Less 20 percent’, the ‘L’ was stylised. He did not discuss his family much. We knew he had a daughter, and at some point, we learnt that she had been married off to a man settled in a foreign land.
Books in Shanbhag’s shop have been described variously. Guha, in his 2003 piece, wrote: “Premier extends over a single room 25 feet-long and 15 feet-wide. In its centre is a mountain of books, seven or eight layers deep, these representing the sediment of knowledge discarded or scorned by Bangaloreans down the years”. I rediscovered Guha’s piece in the dog-eared pages of a newspaper stuffed in a plastic bag that Shanbhag had handed to me sometime in 2006. It contained pieces that had been written on him, the shop and book trade in Bangalore. The earliest piece is from 1991. All of them were indifferently and haphazardly folded. I still wonder why he gave this to me; perhaps he had mentally began unwinding at that time.
Srinivasan kept all his communications from the 1950s, and clippings of various newspapers and magazines in crumpled plastic sheets. All things that fed his worldview were in plastic sheets. Just before he passed away, he sent me early issues of Marg, India issues of international magazines like Newsweek and Time, back issues of New Yorker and Atlantic, and tabloid-sized propaganda material printed on high-quality photographic paper in the erstwhile Soviet Russia and German Democratic Republic. Srinivasan’s room looked like Shanbhag’s book shop – very chaotic. However, both could navigate through their heaps of chaos with ease. Srinivasan never threw away anything. This atheist in his previous life, we thought, was either a raddiwallah or an archivist.
The metaphor of a mountain or a hillock of books and papers suddenly brought back memories of a play adapted for the National School of Drama by eminent theatre person Prasanna – Chinghiz Aitmatov’s The Ascent of Mount Fuji, which I happened to watch with Srinivasan. It was titled Fujiyama in Kannada. In the play, the mountain plays conscience to a bunch of friends who are on an excursion. They take stock of their lives, indulge in nostalgia, confess and make casual conversation. Suddenly, they arrive at a topic of a poet-friend they had let down, who had been picked up by Stalin’s secret police. When this play was staged in the US in 1975, the New York Times wrote that this was a “parable of Stalinism” and “could be applied to McCarthyism”. Now, when there is so much talk about authoritarianism, polarised thought processes, hyper nationalism, and other chronic perversions of our time, the realisation is that the conversation Srinivasan and Shanbhag ignited around their mountain of books tugged at our conscience in a different way. They made us tolerant, they taught diversity, they made us argumentative, human, and rootedly cosmopolitan.
The two booksellers belonged to two different worlds. Srinivasan would never go to Koshy’s. The restaurants he frequented were iconic ones like NMH, CTR, Dwaraka, Janata and MTR on the other side of Bangalore’s divide. He served the cosmopolitans in localities like Malleswaram, Basavanagudi, Jayanagar, JP Nagar and Rajajinagar. His clientele included scientists like Satish Dhawan at the Indian Institute of Science, Supreme Court judges like ES Venkataramaiah, bibliophile chief ministers like Devraj Urs, and of course the Kannada intelligentsia like Girish Kasaravalli, CR Simha, MS Satyu, BV Karanath, KV Rajagopal and TS Ranga, among others.
Shanbhag largely catered to an English-speaking crowd in the cantonment and kept only English books. Srinivasan sold books in English and Kannada. He also gave you posters, stamps and catalogues of international publishers. Shanbhag never left his shop; Srinivasan never left the street in his active years. Srinivasan sold books with a purpose - he sold only what he believed would elevate you to a new level of understanding and empathy. He let loose a harangue if you asked for anything that did not make the cut for him. Shanbhag had no such pretensions. Srinivasan thought he was a public intellectual of the letter-writing variety. He would speak all morning and then go back and write a postcard to you, in which he would sign off with a slogan against either a multinational soda-water company or cricket, or both. He hated cricket from his gut but was a friend of Chinnaswamy, the cricket administrator who lends his name to the cricket stadium in Bangalore. He could stage a dharna against writer UR Ananthmurthy with his friends like actor-writer GK Govinda Rao and philosopher G Ramakrishna, for accepting a house in a posh Bangalore locality from a friendly chief minister. Shanbhag’s political views were never known. He would grumble about this or that decision or policy occasionally, but he was not the campaigning and slogan-shouting type like Srinivasan. This, despite the site of all protests, the Mahatma Gandhi statue, being only a stone’s throw from the Premier Bookshop. Srinivasan was affiliated with the Communist Party of India, which his sister, whom he served till death, had renamed the ‘Confused Party of India’.
To Srinivasan and Shanbhag’s credit, they never tried to covert you to anything. Srinivasan would make angry arguments but, in the end, would make the most human of gestures in Bangalore by taking you for a jamoon, masala dosa and a coffee. Both Srinivasan and Shanbhag were privileged. Both were Brahmins and had enormous cultural capital, more so Srinivasan. He was the grandson of HV Nanjundaiah, the first vice-chancellor of Mysore University and he lived on the street named after him in Malleswaram. The biggest bungalow in Malleswaram, his ancestral home of a few acres, was given away to start a girl’s high school in the wake of India’s Independence. Srinivasan never spoke about his family’s philanthropy.
Growing up if you knew Shanbhag and Srinivasan, then there was a greater chance that you cultivated a natural balance, you became a natural bilingual and became rootedly cosmopolitan, bridging divides that keep Bangalore and India apart. Shanbhag and Srinivasan have left a legacy behind. Bangalore’s book culture has now passed on from them to underprivileged, first-generation entrepreneurs from rural hinterland like Krishna Gowda and Mayi Gowda. These young booksellers were inspired by Shanbhag and Srinivasan. The legends live on through them.
Bus system
A model for other cities
NOVEL IDEAS - What makes buses in Bengaluru a success story, April 7, 2017: The Times of India
While the bus ridership in Delhi is falling, people in Bengaluru are asking for more buses and lower fare.
Bus Bhagya Beku', a campaign run by several informal citizens' groups in Bengaluru, is asking for more public transport options to cut use of private modes.
Bengaluru already has 6,300 buses, compared to about 5,800 in the capital, serving little over half the population of Delhi. The city is now going to procure 3,000 more -1600 by the Karnataka government and 1,400 on `lease models' where private operators will get depot space. Karnataka, in fact, has the largest bus fleet among the states and consequently the lowest number of people per bus ratio.
“Their planning has kept buses as a key part of city building. Through the land monetisation policy , the government has kept a lot for depot space. Delhi has been facing hurdles in acquiring more buses because of depot space, Mumbai also didn't have depot space for years,“ Pawan Mulukutla, transport expert of World Resources Institute (WRI), said at the ConnectKaro conference on sustainable transport and urban development.
Bengaluru also has traffic and transit management centres (TTMC) where buses can be parked. The spare space can be rented out to offices and the money earned can be ploughed back into the bus service.“They have GPS tracking for buses. There is a control centre so that they can speak to drivers and check breakdowns at the earliest. They also have electronic ticketing and an app for commuters which I will not call the best but they are improving,“ he added.
In Delhi, the DTC ridership has fallen from 43.47 lakh in 2013-14 to 35.37 in 2015-16. Ex perts said the tendering process for buses was complicated in Delhi and it had failed to innovate.
V Ravichandar from Bengaluru, who shared Bangalore's citizen movement story at the session on how to prioritise buses and connect a city efficiently , said, “The 6,300 buses are moving nearly half the city while the other half is dependent on nearly 60 lakh vehicles. If we have more buses, we won't need these private vehicles. It will address traffic congestion too.“
Bengaluru has a segregated bus service system where premium and regular buses cater to all categories of commuters. “They have made big reforms over a period of time.They have also rationalised routes,“ said Anumita Roy Chowdhury , executive director (research and advocacy) at Centre for Science and Environment. Experts also suggested that a cess be imposed on fuel to make money for state transport undertakings.
Ethnic composition
Muslim ‘majority’ areas
(In many of the areas listed below the Muslims are the single- biggest group or have a substantial presence. In some they are, indeed, in a majority.)
(Which areas of Bangalore are Muslim-majority? | Quora, 2017-18.)
The following are the authors of this section:
Balaraju Cacarla, Bhavana Kumar, Guna S Gownder, Himamshu S, Karthik Ramesh, Pranav Palliyil, Rakshith Ballal, Syed Irfan.
In the big cities of Karnataka, Muslim percentage is not as high as it is in middle-level cities and towns of the state. Bangalore has more than a million Muslims as per the last census report [2011].
Population of Bangalore metropolitan city [municipal area, BBMP] is 84.95 lakh
Population of Muslims in Bangalore [BBMP] 11.81 lakh
Percentage of Muslims in Bangalore metro area is 13.9% (From Pranav Palliyil)
Going by assembly constituencies, Shiva ji Nagar tops the list followed by Sarvajna Nagar, Pulikeshi Nagar, Shanti Nagar, Chamrajpet and Chikpet. Other constituencies have a Muslim population but scattered. (Rakshith Ballal)
Areas with a substantial Muslim population
Bamboo Bazar bear Cantonment and adjoining areas.
Basvanagudi
Bommanahalli
Bommanahalli
Mangammana palya
Cotton pet
Gori Palya
Islam Pur near HAL
J.C.Nagar
Jai mahal Nagar
JC Nagar
JP Nagar - Gafoor layout
K R Market
Kalasi Palya
Kengeri
M D Block or Mohammedan Block near Malleshwaram
M S Palya or Mohammad Sahab Palya (Before Yelahanka New Town Bus Stop & After Vidyaranyapuram Bus Stop).
Madiwala
Madiwala Mosque
Majestic
Malleshwaram
Mangammana Palya
Mysore Road abutting Nayandahalli
Nagarth pet
Neelasandra
Parts of Fort area
RT Nagar
Shiva ji Nagar
Sultan pet
Sultan pete
Tanny Road
Tilaknagar
Yelahanka
Yelahanka
Yeshwanthpur
Logo
Unveiled in 2017
HIGHLIGHTS
Brand Bengaluru got its own logo – the tagline 'Bengaluru – Be U' (be you).
Selected from among 1,350 entries, the logo aims to signify Bengaluru’s cosmopolitan culture, a sense of belonging, 480-year history and futuristic outlook.
Brand Bengaluru got its own logo on Sunday - the tagline 'Bengaluru - Be U' (be you) is expected to build the city's image on the global stage.
The city is the first to gets its own identity badge. Selected from 1,350 entries, the logo aims to signify Bengaluru's cosmopolitan culture, a sense of belonging, 480-year history and futuristic outlook. IT-BT and tourism minister Priyank Kharge said the logo would be used to enhance tourism in Karnataka.
The rolling font was devised by bankers-turned-designers Rushi Patel and M Venkateswara Rao, founders of Nammur, a design firm. The first two letters, B, E, and the last, U, of Bengaluru are in red, highlighting the tagline Be U. The seventh and eighth letters (U and R) resemble the vowel, oo, in Kannada.
The logo was unveiled amid festivities at Vidhana Soudha, which was opened up for Open Street, in the presence of Bengaluru development minister K J George, Gandhinagar MLA Dinesh Gundu Rao, Shantinagar MLA NA Haris, and Bengaluru mayor R Sampath Raj.
Real estate
Residential properties: most expensive/ 2017
HIGHLIGHTS
Some new properties have been assessed and included in the guidance value notification for 2017-18
Raj Bhavan Road continues to be the costliest area for plots at Rs 25,000/sq ft
A fairly new entrant in the realty market has emerged to be the most expensive residential property in Bengaluru. Purva Grande, a luxury apartment complex on Lavelle Road, has recently been included in the assessment books of Stamps and Registration (SR) Department, beating its neighbour UB Towers on Vittal Mallya Road to become the costliest. While the newbie is priced at Rs 22,946/sq ft, UB Towers' value in the government records is Rs22,388/sq ft.
The guidance value notification for 2017-18, which was published recently by the Stamps and Registration Department (rates effective from April 1 onwards) does not have any major revision of property rates. The slump in the real estate industry, made worse by demonetisation, made the government defer the property price revision for the year. With a little tweak here and there, some new properties have been assessed and included in the notification.
Purva Grande on Lavelle Road, a luxury 3 and 4 BHK residential complex, with unit area ranging from 3,000 sq ft to 4,350 sq ft, is currently being transacted for up to Rs 13 crore. In 2016, Wimbledon Court on Race Course Road was priced above UB City by the SR Department, but was brought down subsequently. Purva Grande came into the sub-registrar's fold in 2017 with Rs 22,946 per sq ft.
Raj Bhavan Road continues to be the costliest area for plots at Rs 25,000/sq ft, while Cunningham Road from Chandrika-Balekundri Circle stretch, which commanded the highest price for many years, is currently priced at Rs 22,509/sq ft. Sankey Road up to Bellary Road, another area which is one among the costliest, is Rs 22,304/sq ft. Another new property that has entered the valuation books is Prestige Edwardian on Cunningham Road, which is valued at Rs 20,139/sq ft.
Inspector General of Registration and Commissioner of Stamps Manoj Kumar Meena told Bangalore Mirror: "We have not revised the property rates. Only the new and unlisted properties were assessed and prices have been fixed. Since we need to notify property rates for this financial year, a fresh notification with area-wise guidance value have been published. The government has decided not to revise the property value for the next one year. The department which is one of the top three revenue grossers for the state's kitty has suffered a massive shortage of Rs 1,350 crore in its collection through stamp duty and registration.
The commercial high-rise, Prestige-Khoday towers, opposite Raj Bhavan, which was not cleared by the police for security reasons, has now been approved for occupancy. This time, the property has made it to the records — it has been assessed at Rs 15,000/sq ft. Also Queen's Court apartment at Queen's Circle has a fresh assessment — Rs 8,382/sq ft.
Science & Technology
48% of MNC R&D talent is in Bengaluru
The Times of India Feb 03 2016
Bengaluru remains home to the highest number of multinational R&D centres and talent pool in India. New entrants last year included Twitter. It is estimated that the numbers will rise significantly over the coming years as disruptive new technologies make it imperative for MNCs to use India's huge engineering talent pool.
As much as 48%, or 155,000, of the MNC R&D workforce of 323,000 in India is in Bengaluru, as per a study by research firm Zinnov Consulting for 2015. Pune follows with 40,300, a quarter of that in Bengaluru; NCR is third with 31,000.
Bengaluru also accounts for 456 of the 1,165 MNC R&D centres in India (there are 928 MNCs, with some having multiple centres in India).An R&D professional is one who is involved in some part of product development.
India remains the No. 1location for MNCs to establish product engineering and R&D centres. The growth of these centres in India is outpac ing the average global growth. India accounted for $12.3 billion, or 40%, of the total of $31 billion of globalized engineering and R&D in 2015.Many of the world's biggest companies have centres in India. In 2015, 15 new MNCs entered India, including. Zinnov estimates that by 2020, the number of MNCs with centres in India will climb to 1,139, from 928 now, and their workforce will rise by 57% - to 508,000, from 323,000.
"New technologies like big data & analytics, mobility UIUX (user interfaceuser experience), machine learn ing, artificial intelligence and cloud are really disrup tive, and the need to do R&D in India in these areas wil rise sharply . No other coun try, outside the US, can provide the scale of engineers that India can," Anand Subramaniam, program manager at Zinnov, says. The costs in India are also a fraction of that in the US.
Subramaniam says software is becoming an integral part of every industry . This makes India, with its traditional strength in software, particularly valuable to MNCs. Pune is gaining from the increasing use of software in the automotive industry . The technology startup phenomenon is also helping to expand the required talent pool.
Trees
5,000 are felled every year
5,000 trees fall in Bangalore each year
Saswati Mukherjee,TNN | Apr 16, 2014 The Times of India
BANGALORE: Almost 5,000 trees fell in Bangalore each year, after processing roughly 3,000 applications in one year. This information was given out by Brijesh Kumar, Chief Conservator of Forests, Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagar Palike (BBMP).
Kumar gave a detailed analysis of the Karnataka Preservation of Tree Act, 1976, which he said has endowed authorities with powers that allow intransparent decision making. This has encouraged indiscriminate felling of trees and the situation is now worsening in the name of road widening and various developmental projects. He said the decision making process to allow felling of trees was deeply flawed and this could not be remedied unless the Tree Act is amended comprehensively. For instance, the application and approval system for tree felling is completely in the control of the Tree Officer, of rank Asst Conservator of Forests, and rarely is an application rejected. Not a single appeal against a decision to tree felling has come before the Tree Authority.
In such prevailing circumstances, Kumar said the High Court has drawn the attention of the Government to this blatant illegality in the PIL filed by ESG (WP 7107/2008), that the current process allows one to be a judge in one's own cause which is anathema in law. The Government in response has confirmed that it will reform the law, but no action has been initiated thus far to this effect.
In this context, he said he and his colleagues had worked on promoting a transparent model of decision making relating to decisions on trees. This method essentially allowed for a 15 days delay between a decisions, say to fell trees, and its implementation. During this period it would be possible for anyone to challenge the decision, if needed. Further, if even after the challenge before the Tree Officer failed, a further 15 days would be allowed for the Tree Authority to review the decisions, the system which is yet to be implemented.
Water scarcity
Likely to run out of drinking water
As water crisis worsens, is B’luru heading for Day Zero?, February 14, 2018: The Times of India
South African city Cape Town’s severe water shortage — which has made it the first city globally to face Day Zero (when government will shut down water connections for homes and businesses) — has turned the spotlight on other big metros which might have to face this reality in the near term.
A water-starved Bengaluru, it is believed, might make this infamous cut as it is seen as edging towards a crisis of epic proportions.
With natural waterbodies becoming victims of concretisation and rainwater harvesting being a low priority, the tech capital’s future appears grim in terms of meeting the water requirements of its one-crore-plus people.
In fact, alarm bells rang loud to this effect when a BBC report, reportedly based on UN-endorsed projections, listed Bengaluru in the second position after Brazil’s São Paulo among the 11 global cities that are likely to run out of drinking water.
A trailer of the impending crisis became clear when Bengaluru development minister KJ George admitted that the availability of water per person per day will be 88 litres by 2031 when the city’s population will touch 20 million. Currently, the norm for domestic water usage is 135 litres per capita per day as prescribed by the Central Public Health and Environmental Engineering Organisation.
Though the state government claims it will be spending Rs 5,500 crore by 2023 to increase water availability for Bengaluru to 2,175 million litres per day (MLD) from the current 1,391 MLD, not everyone is enthused. In fact, the 1,391 MLD comprises 678 MLD of Cauvery river water, 672 MLD of groundwater and 41 MLD of recycled water.
“Bengaluru has faced a harsh drinking water crisis in the past four summers. A lot could have been learnt and the situation could have been improved. But there is no political determination and bureaucratic vision with regard to water for the city,” a senior bureaucrat told
See also
Indpaedia has several pages on Bangalore/ Bengaluru, e.g.
Bangalore: Parliamentary elections
