A lot of people see this skywalk as a success story. It was built as a public private partnership by companies to solve a specific problem their employees faced, in good faith. In fact, companies all along the Outer Ring Road tried to build footbridges, overpasses, and did all kinds of things to protect their employees. They helped the Bengaluru government get funding and accelerate the construction of a metro line. Many companies collectively even hired cranes and kept them on standby so that when a vehicle broke down it could be removed quickly to keep traffic flowing.

Everyone knows that Bengaluru’s public infrastructure is broken. There are tons of pictures and videos of dug-up roads, abandoned flyovers, and encroached lakes. We know this. We’ve seen all of this. 

A lot of people think that the big problem in Bengaluru is the lack of development. 

Not true.

The bigger problem is what people think successful development is supposed to look like. 

The solution is part of the problem. 

Let’s dive in.

Back in 1980, a political theorist named Langdon Winner published a journal article titled ‘Do Artifacts Have politics?’

Don’t be fooled by the dull-sounding title. Winner’s paper is one of the most influential academic papers ever written. It’s been cited thousands of times, and is usually mandatory reading if you work in an area that involves society, politics, and technology. 

The central question that Winner asks is this: 

Do technological objects have political properties? Do they inherently have attributes that give them power and authority? 

You may be tempted to say no. You may argue that technology is generally neutral and can be deployed by human beings in all manner of ways. Some of this may either be good, bad, or for evil purposes. The prevailing argument is that technology isn’t inherently political, its usage is what makes it political. 

Winner disagrees. He says that objects have politics inherent to themselves. And as a result, objects create massive social consequences just by the way they are designed and made, independent of who wields them. 

In broad strokes, to understand how Bengaluru’s urban structures changed, we need to understand how India changed. For the first few decades after independence, most urban development happened through a system of robust central planning, usually all the way from the top to the bottom, to decide on acquisition, allocation, and distribution of resources. Central governments made five-year plans. Cities made Master Plans. And India grew and expanded under this model. 

Post-liberalisation, this approach started to change. Private capital entered into sectors one by one, and over time, the state began withdrawing from all these spaces. Sure, some of this was good for people like us, because the state was doing a terrible job anyway. But as private capital went deeper, the state lost the incentive to do the basic stuff for the people who needed it the most. Think about, say, public schools. When education was the exclusive domain of the government, it gave it its full attention. But when private schools emerged, the quality of public education fell even more steeply. 

This is also true about urban development. 

Right in the middle of Bengaluru’s business district, there’s a skyscraper called the Public Utility Building. If you drive down M G Road, you can’t miss it. It’s the tallest building in the area, overlooking the Chinnaswamy Stadium and Cubbon Park. I’d argue that it’s located in the most desirable location in the entire city. 

Just stop the political bickering, privatize it, and make money off the building, you’d argue. 

But what if the building itself had politics inherent to it?

Winner argues that there are two ways artifacts have political properties. 

The first way is by decision. It may be the choices made to develop or make a product, and the specific features around its design and arrangement. These things by themselves add political properties to an object, independent of who uses them.

In his paper, Winner gives a memorable example to illustrate this—the height of bridges in Long Island, New York. 

Here’s what it looks like.

On the face of it, bridges feel like development. But as we now know, artifacts have political attributes. They aren’t neutral. 

In Bengaluru, if you walk in the Central Business District, all the way from Church Street off MG Road and all around St Marks Road, you’ll notice that the footpaths and pedestrian crossings seem amazing. In fact, the rest of the city is practically unwalkable, but this area is an exception. And that’s because of an initiative called TenderSURE, which was responsible for building these spaces.

And how does the central government decide which city needs the funds?

It makes them compete with each other. 

It feels like development. 

But is it? 

When cities lose control of their destiny, usually because the money for development comes from other sources through a competition, it forces cities to build what they can get their hands on. There’s no cohesive plan anymore. And all of this capital comes with its caveats, clauses, and conditions. Like how TenderSURE is a form of development using funds given by someone else to build something in isolation through a competition. This approach also has consequences. Like how Bengaluru has spent five years trying to build a flyover nobody needs in Koramangala because the funds were originally given and then withdrawn by the Union Government. 

And just like with central planning, this approach of making entities compete to get access to funds for development starts from the top and goes all the way down. The message is that everyone needs to fend for themselves and fight for what they want. Nothing is given without conditions. You can be the best at what you do, or the one who needs it the most, or the one who deserves it more than others, but capital cares little about all of those things. 

Here’s how Mohandas Pai describes how this happens to Bengaluru. 

For instance, I bet you didn’t know that just last month, India’s first fully air-conditioned railway station was inaugurated in Bengaluru. The pictures are remarkable. It looks and feels like a modern airport. 

And it’s practically on the Outer Ring Road. 

Yeah, I know. I was surprised too.

Again, an air-conditioned railway station feels like development.  

Well…

Bengaluru’s urban development has always been dictated by the accessibility and availability of capital. Sometimes it’s from the central government, or the state government, or by government entities like the Indian Railways. And this results in situations where the state government has to mortgage public buildings, like the Town Hall, yes, the city’s Town Hall, to get access to funds to pay contractors.

There’s an elevated expressway in Bengaluru that runs from Silk Board Junction all the way to Electronics City. While the traffic below crawls and snarls and is incredibly slow, the expressway is a breeze.

Well, here’s a news story about how it happened, published back from 2004. Read it and see if any of it sounds familiar in 2022. Note the stakeholders involved in the project, and who asked for it. 

Would Langdon Winner agree that the elevated expressway, by the way it was designed and arranged, has political properties, independent of who uses them? 

I think he would. 

But according to Winner, there’s another way artifacts have political properties. 

And that’s not by decision, but by necessity. 

His argument is that certain technological artifacts need certain kinds of political arrangements to exist. Like how nuclear power plants are more compatible with a centralised authority that’s able to get land, capital, talent, specialised infrastructure, and a lot of other things. On the other hand, something like, say, solar power is decentralised and does not need a strong authoritarian government to get wide adoption.  

Right now, what’s happening in Bengaluru is that the political properties of its bridges, buildings, flyovers, and railway stations are derived both by decision and by necessity. A skywalk is built across a road to solve a specific problem asked for by a specific entity, which cares about nothing else except to prevent its employees from getting run over. Flyovers are built because someone else in another part of the city wants it, even if it excludes the vast majority of people in that area. Air-conditioned railway stations are made because the Indian Railways will fund it, without any regard for how people will get to the station. A building languishes in the heart of the city. Bungalows worth crores go underwater. 

Bengaluru’s solutions are Bengaluru’s problems.

Note: Special thanks to a couple of people who spoke to me extensively which helped me shape today’s edition. 

Nitin Pai, co-founder and director of the Takshashila Institution, an independent centre for research and education in public policy. 

Dr. Sushmita Pati, Assistant Professor, Political Science; National Law School of India, Bengaluru.