bbmp – Pertinent Observations

Analysing the BBMP Elections

The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) went to polls on Saturday, and votes were counted today. The BJP has retained its majority in the house, winning 100 out of 198 available seats. While this is a downer compared to the 113 seats they had won in the previous elections in 2010, the fact that they have won despite being in opposition in the state is a significant achievement.

Based on data put out by Citizen Matters, here is some rudimentary analysis. The first is a choropleth of where each party has performed. Note that this is likely to be misleading since constituencies with large areas are over-represented, but this can give you a good picture.

blrelec — Red: BJP Green: Congress Cyan: JD(S) Blue: Independents Black: Others

Notice that there are a few “bands” where the BJP has performed really well. There is the south-western part of the city that it has literally swept, and it has done well in the south-eastern and northern suburbs, too. And the party hasn’t done too well in the north-west, the traditional “cantonment” area.

We can get a better picture of this by looking at the choropleths by assembly constituency. These shapes might be familiar to regular readers of the blog since I’d done one post on gerrymandering.

This tells you where each party has done well. As was evident from the first figure, the BJP has done rather well in Basavanagudi, Jayanagar and Padmanabhanagar in “traditional South Bangalore” and blanked out in Pulakeshi Nagar in the cantonment. In fact, if you try to correlate these results with that of the last Assembly elections, the correlation is rather strong. Most constituencies have gone the way of the assembly segments they are part of.

Then there is the issue of reservation – there were a lot of murmurs that the Congress party which is in power in the state changed the reservations to suit itself. Yet, there are a few interesting factoids that indicate that the new set of reservations were rather logical.

The next two graphs show the distribution of SC and ST populations respectively as a function of the reservations of the constituencies (population data from http://openbangalore.org).

Notice that the constituencies reserved for SCs and STs are among those that have the highest SC and ST populations respectively. The trick in gerrymandering was in terms of distributions between general and OBC constituencies, and among women.

I could put the performance of different parties by reservation categories, and on whether the reservation of a constituency has changed has any effect on results, but (un)fortunately, there aren’t any trends, and consequently there is little information content. Hence I won’t bother putting them in.

Nevertheless, these have been extremely interesting elections. All the postponement, all the drama and court case, and finally the underdog (based on previous trends) winning. Yet, given the structure of the corporation, there is little hope that much good will come of the city in the coming years. And there is nothing in the election results that can alter this.

Splitting BBMP and gerrymandering ToK

Kannada organisations have argued against splitting of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), the civic agency that is supposed to govern Bangalore, arguing that a three-way-split of the municipal corporation, as has been proposed, will lead to “non-Kannadiga mayors” for some of the newly created corporations, and hence this is an “anti-Kannada” move. In a funny twist, the Chief Minister himself has had to make a statement that the split won’t lead to “Telugu and Tamil mayors”.

A couple of months back, Thejaswi Udupa had written this tongue-in-cheek post on the geopolitics of Bangalore, for April Fool’s Day on Takshashila’s Logos blog. The Business Standard picked it up and published it as an Op-Ed the next day. The reason the piece matters is that it introduces the larger public to the wonderful phrase ToK. Quoting,

The largest of disputed territories in Bangalore is that of ToK. Tamil occupied Karnataka. These are large swathes of interconnected parcels of land in the South-Eastern quadrant of Bangalore. ToK’s existence is mostly under the radar, and people notice it only when the census figures come in once a decade with its linguistic break-ups, and suddenly people realise that nearly 25% of Bangalore’s population is Tamil. However, there are many who believe that ToK stands for Telugu owned Karnataka, as most of the land here is owned by Telugu landlords.

So basically the concern of the Kannada organisations is that when Bangalore is split ToK (however you may define it) will become an independent city. While some people might consider it a good thing in a “ok those buggers are not in our city any more” sort of way, these organisations will see this as a loss of territory, and consequently as a loss of power. So this is a genuine problem.

While this might be a genuine problem, the fact is that there is a “genuine” solution to this problem. We had seen last month about how Bangalore city is so badly gerrymandered in terms of splitting its assembly constituencies. For example, my constituency (Padmanabhanagar) looks like a dancing hen. To refresh your memory, this is what Bangalore’s assembly constituencies look like:

So if assembly constituencies are so badly gerrymandered, what prevents us from gerrymandering the municipal corporations? And there is further precedence to this – there are primarily three Parliamentary constituencies in Bangalore, and it is not hard to argue that they have been gerrymandered in a similar manner.

It all finally comes down to the mechanics of how we split the city. If the city is cut into three by drawing North-South lines (creating “Bangalore East”, “Bangalore West” and “Bangalore”), we have a problem, since the Bangalore East thus created will largely coincide with ToK, and we might end up with non-Kannadiga mayors there, as the Kannada organisations fear.

However, considering that Bangalore is being split for purely administrative efficiencies, and for no real cultural reasons, there is no reason we need to split the city in that way. All we need to do is to draw the lines in an East-West fashion, as we have done with our Parliamentary constituencies, giving us a “Bangalore North”, “Bangalore Central” and “Bangalore South”. A split like this, well done and well gerrymandered, will ensure that ToK is split evenly into the three new corporations, and all will remain under the control of the Kannadigas.

So the Kannada organisations don’t need to fear the split. Solution exists. Only thing they need to fear is the way the split is implemented. And with precedence (parliamentary gerrymandering) on their side, they really have nothing to fear!

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Varun Shenoy for the discussions leading up to this post

Gerrymandering in Bangalore

So a couple of years back, just before the Karnataka Assembly elections, I had taken a look at Gerrymandering within the constituencies of Bangalore. This picture shows the boundaries of the parliamentary constituencies in the city, and you can see that it is bizarre. For example, parts of the Bangalore North parliamentary constituency (black) lie to the south of all of Bangalore South constituency (green)!

Now, the word “gerrymander” was invented in the 1800s, when one Mr. Gerry, who was the governor of Massachusetts, redrew the districts (constituencies) in the state in order to maximise the chances of his further election victory, and the redrawn districts looked like some kind of a mythical creature, which was given the name “gerrymander”.

Now, while the Bangalore figure above looks bizarre, no doubt, it doesn’t really resemble any animal, mythical or otherwise. However, with the proposed BBMP Restructuring, Bangalore’s wards are in the news again. And I was just looking at the population densities in different wards, and happened to take a look at Padmanabhanagar, which is my current assembly constituency. And this is what it looks like (different components are the different wards within the constituency, and intensity of colouring indicates population density within these wards).

Yes, really, that is the shape of the Padmanabhanagar assembly constituency. If you have any doubts, get the data from http://openbangalore.org and check out for yourself (that’s where I got the mapping data from; density data came from the BBMP Restructuring site – there’s a link there with excel file on areas and populations).

Anyway, so what do you think Padmanabhanagar looks like? To me, this looks like a hen that is running. To Thejaswi Udupa, with whom I shared this picture, it looks like a “hen doing ballet”.

Whatever it is, such gerrymandering leads to atrocious policy and implementation. My house, for example, is very close to the beak of the hen described above. In other words, it’s in one extreme corner of the constituency. Actually, if you look at the portion forming the hen’s head, that’s Yediyur ward, and my house is at one extreme of Yediyur ward, too.

The road outside was dug up a year and half back and hasn’t yet been asphalted. Stone slabs covering storm water drains were removed four months back for desilting and are yet to be placed back. And because we are at one extreme edge of both assembly and BBMP constituencies, neither MLA (R Ashok) nor corporator (NR Ramesh) bothers.

If there were no gerrymandering, there wouldn’t be any “extreme corners” like this one. And that would mean less chance for elected representatives to ignore certain parts. And that would lead to better governance!

Update:

This is what all the constituencies of Bangalore look like (click for a full size image)

Let your imagination run wild!

Site Allotment

In Bangalore, you have two kinds of residential layouts, BDA Layouts and Revenue Layouts. The former are layouts that have been created by the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) or its predecessor the City Improvement Trust Board (CITB). These agencies acquired land from villages which were then on the outskirts of Bangalore, planned layouts with sites of different sizes, roads, “civic amenity sites”, etc. and then “allotted” them to applicants based on certain criteria.

To get a site allotted, you had to declare that you didn’t own a house in Bangalore, pay an upfront amount and wait for a few years before you would get your plot at a fairly subsidized amount in what was then the outskirts of the city. There were also layouts that were created and allotted to different PSUs. For example, you have ISRO Layout near Banashankari where sites were allotted at low prices to employees of ISRO. Similarly there are several “bank colonies” all over Bangalore. These sites were again allotted at subsidized rates. The government would acquire land from villagers, pass it on to the PSU employee association who would then allot them to employees. Interestingly, the resultant sale deed would be between the original owner of the land (typically a farmer) and the employee. The government and PSU’s name would be absent.

Revenue layouts did not have a government middleman. Original owners of the land (typically farmers) would cut it up into plots, allot area for roads and sell it directly to people to build houses there. Initially these areas would be deemed “illegal” thanks to their violation of zoning laws. In due course of time, they would get “recognized” by the BDA or BBMP and then BWSSB would provide water supply and drainage (till then people would rely on borewells and septic tanks).

If you drive a few kilometers out of Bangalore, especially in the eastern direction, you are likely to see a few mini Gurgaons. There has been absolutely no planning here, and so you have skyscrapers (either apartments or office complexes) interspersed with vast tracts of empty land. It is a sprawl out there, and there is no way one can live in these parts without a car. The vast empty spaces also mean these areas are ripe for criminal activity, and the buildings usually have private sources for their public goods (such as water or drainage).

While this makes a case for planned urban development (with its associated “site allotments”), there is also the issue of corruption. If you look at some of the corruption cases that have been filed recently against Karnataka politicians and bureaucrats, you will notice that they mostly have to do with land use and site allotments. Yeddyurappa went to jail in a “land denotification” case – that corrupt act was made possible because the government controls zoning. Former Lok Ayukta Shivaraj Patil had to resign because he got allotted a site when he already owned a house in the city.

So on one hand you get well planned and manageable cities, but significant scope for corruption and rent seeking. On the other, you have chaos and unplanned development, and several mini Gurgaons rather than proper cities. It seems like we have a no-win situation here. How do we handle it?

PS: I know that revenue layouts also involve heavy corruption, in terms of “regularising” or changing land use. However, surprisingly given the amounts involved, this kind of corruption seems to have remained at the lower levels of bureaucracy

The Jairaj Model

So finally here is the follow-up to the Union Square Park post. Basically most parks in Bangalore follow what I term as the Jairaj model. Even a number of parks that are older than 10 years old have been remodeled using this model in the last few years.

K Jairaj became the commissioner of the BBMP around the turn of the millennium. The story goes that his parents, who live in Banashankari 2nd Stage, complained to him that they had no place for their daily evening walks. And so Jairaj takes this piece of barren BBMP land (on 24th cross, close to the BDA complex) and converts it into a beautiful park. So the park provides for walking paths, lots of shrubs and flowering plants and a small play area for children. Trust me, it’s really beautiful.

This was soon followed by the development of the Hanumanthanagar park by then-corporator later-mayor K Chandrasekhar. It again followed a similar model – and given its greater area included fancies like a musical fountain (if I’m not wrong). Again a big hit among the residents, especially the middle-aged and elderly who now had a nice place for their morning and evening walks.

The trend was set. Following the success of these two parks, all small parks in Bangalore started to be remodeled based on these two. Trust me, they are all really good looking and most are quite well maintained. But it remains that the primary purpose of most of these parks is to provide a venue for middle-aged and elderly to go for morning and evening walks, and a small area for children with slides and swings, and little else.

Normally we take this for granted and wonder what else a park needs to do. But if you visit some of the better parks abroad (I’m taking the example of the tiny Union Square Park here) you’ll know what you are missing out on. Parks are now gated and shuttered, and don’t let people in during the day time (which is good in the way that it provides time for maintenance). And they are unidimensional, which is sad.

And I’m told that there is now a major battle in several areas between youth and middle-aged, with respect to proposals for playgrounds to be converted to parks.

And these parks are strictly “walkers parks” and not “runners parks”. Not so long-ago I used to go to the nearby Krishna Rao park for a run every morning. I gave up because of the traffic jam inside the park. Narrow pathways on which aunties and uncles would walk abreast in large groups, and so it became more of an obstacle race than a leisurely morning run.

Keeping Transaction Costs Low

The Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike’s coffers aren’t Bruhat, it seems. For the up-coming road widening project, for which considerable amounts of land need to be acquired, it seems like the BBMP can’t afford to pay in cash. Hence, it has been proposed that compensation will be paid in terms of Transferable Development Rights (TDRs). The basic funda is that when your land gets acquired, you get rights to construct more in some other existing site, or on the remaining part of your site, or some such.

Quoting

According to a BBMP official, TDR is an instrument through which the Palike facilitates landlosers to construct additional floor or building in the remaining portion of the property or anywhere in the City.

…

The BBMP would issue a Development Rights Certificate (DRC), which can be either be utilised for personal need or can be sold to anyone who wants to construct an extra floor. The owner gets the right to construct a built up area 1.5 times over and above of that the property acquired for development. For instance, if 600 sq ft built-up area is given up to the BBMP, the property owner will receive a DRC for 900 sq ft built-up area.

This is interesting on several counts. Firstly, do you realize that what the BBMP is paying for the land is effectively an option? A TDR is nothing but an OPTION to construct more than what would normally have been permitted. The valuation of this option hinges upon the fact that current building laws are highly restrictive (in terms of the built up area as a proportion of the site area) and so the option of constructing more will actually be valuable.

It would be interesting to see how these options get valued. You can trust that there will be a lot of litigation concerning this since you can expect most people to have problem with the valuation. First of all valuation of financial options is itself so tough, you can imagine how hard valuing these TDRs can be.

Then, there is the whole supply aspect. The whole model of these TDRs will hinge upon the unwritten promise that more such rights will not be given away any time in the near future, since that will cause the value of existing TDRs to drop sharply. Given that there is one single agency (the BBMP) that controls the supply of such rights, and that the potential supply of such rights is infinite, there is a chance that valuation of these rights might be depressed.

One important thing the BBMP needs to take into account while issuing these rights is to make sure there are no transaction costs for trading these rights. The “transferable” bit needs to be emphasized in order for the value of these rights to be truly unlocked. I can see a large number of individuals who will be compensated with these rights who will want to trade them away, since they are unlikely to possess another site to utilize them. And given the number of big buildings coming up on small sites, I can foresee there being a decent demand for it.

I do hope that investment banks (or their equivalent) come forward in order to make markets in these rights. I’m sure banks won’t miss opportunity to step in here, but the important thing is for regulation that will enable such intermediation. It is in the interests of the BBMP to keep these transaction costs low, since that is going to have a positive impact on the valuation of these rights, and eventually less such rights can be given.

Postscript: It would be interesting to study the impact of these rights on bribery rates of BBMP officials. I’m sure that currently a lot of money is made in illegally granting rights for buildings that don’t conform to regulations. Since there will now be a legal way of getting similar favours (I’m told that the Akrama-Sakrama scheme has similar intentions) it would be useful to see if bribes do drop.

The National College Flyover

What will happen to the controversial National College Flyover when the Metro gets built? If I remember right, the proposed Metro goes from Lalbagh West Gate up Vani Vilas road, and is supposed to take a right turn on to K R Road at the National College circle. Surely there is no space on VV Road to for the metro and the flyover to exist side by side. They can’t take the metro underground there since the ground there has to bear the additional weight of the flyover.

So what will become of the flyover? Yet another example of the BBMP’s shortsightedness.

I don’t remember the forum (it might have been this blog, or its predecessor) but I had once mentioned as to how the National College Flyover was useless. And I had gotten shouted down by a bunch of people saying “go in the evening and see the number of vehicles on the flyover, and you’ll know it’s not useless”. I’ve gone there a few evenings after that (over the last 2-3 years) and watched the traffic in the evening, and still believe that it wasn’t necessary.

It wasn’t necessary because the traffic at the intersection isn’t enough of a reduction in petrol and time cost of going over the flyover to pay for the flyover in a reasonable number of years (if I remember my minor subjects right, this is the standard reasoning by transportation engineers). People on K R Road, and the traffic going towards Jain college from “north road” (the western part of VV Road) still have to spend an insane amount of time at the signal. People on VV Road have it easy but then they get stuck at the new signal that has been installed at the junction of VV Road and Shankar Mutt Road.

And to consider the amount of controversy that the flyover created when it was built. And the fact that it’s most likely going to get pulled down for the metro construction.