Bangalore is now a big city!

I lived in Bangalore from 1991 to 2005. Lived in most parts of Bangalore starting from Rajajinagar, Basaveshwarnagar in the West, Koramangala in the South to Palm Meadows in the East and Jakkur in the north. In this period, I was witness to Bangalore growing from the quite, sleepy, public sector town with a spattering of small IT companies to a globally recognized IT destination. From the dream of most of the middle class to own a 60x40 "site" in the early 90's to many NRIs and local IT entrepreneurs to own a "million $ property" in gated communities like Palm Meadows by 2000. In this period, I also saw it transform in the corporate sector from a very South Indian cosmopolitan setup into a destination of professionals from all over India and from 2002 from many parts of the world.

Visited Bangalore last week after a gap of a few months. The very well organized new airport, includes a very visible bus system with plush buses and a professional service. Its the only airport I have seen in the world that has such a visible bus service and seems to be a part of the public consciousness with good connectivity and visibility in most parts of the city.

With the new airport and the road into the city, its B-Trac service, around 100 policeman in a 20 km stretch with Blackberry enabled offence tracking system (developed and deployed by my friend Suresh) its now a big city, acquiring some of the infrastructure of Delhi. The elevated roadway system from Silk Board junction to Electronic City and a few other infrastructure projects will clear some of the bottlenecks that make it almost impossible to estimate how much time it will take to a point in South Bangalore after getting from the airport to Mekri Circle in about 1/2 hour. Friends tell me about 2 hour drives for distances that could be covered in 1/2 hour earlier.

I stayed in South Bangalore and planned to visit a few friends in the Eastern part of Bangalore. Just could not make it! and just about made it back to the airport in time for my flight back to Pune (was a relief since missing flights due to traffic is quite common in Bangalore). After staying in Pune now for the last 3 years, where it doesn't take more than 1 hour to get from one end of the city to the other, I just could not plan effectively to make it through all parts of my visit agenda.

Bangalore is now a truly big city, and seems now to be logically divided into four parts, e.g. Whitefiled area can now be truly called East Bangalore! However it now needs to quickly execute all its infrastructure plans with a Comprehensive Mobility Plan and especially complete its Metro project and connect the airport to the city. Not many people can afford Air Deccan's helicopter service to get into the city!