It is a beautiful morning in Bangalore but I am “dreaded” at the thought of stepping out of my house. I am praying in my mind and expecting a miracle from “God” to make the traffic disappear at various circles/junctions enroute. One such junction is 500 meters away from my apartment complex and if Gods are not happy- by car it can take 15-20 mins to cover a distance of 500 meters. This probably could be the world’s slowest moving traffic under normal circumstances. To add to injury, government bodies have given approvals for new apartment complexes to be constructed in this area. These new apartment complexes will house ~2000 additional families and their cars. But where are the roads to accommodate this additional traffic?

Some of us will buff this discussion by quoting examples from the world that London, New York and Tokyo also have their set of traffic related problems. Or some optimistic friends would mention these traffic woes as derivative of growth- look at the bigger picture, we are growing.

Yes, we are growing indeed but there is cost of this growth. We are spending more and more time on road, hence raising frustration levels in our mind and raising pollution levels in the air. The quality of air we breathe, the water we drink- all are getting polluted by minute. If you are in Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai or other such city- the air you breathed now would be more polluted than the air you breathed when you started reading this blog.

Another group of friends would turn me to new infrastructure projects undertaken to solve not just traffic problems but also housing and water related issues. While I am appreciative of these efforts but these projects are like band aids on the broken system. We need a better solution than just fixing the problems every time they appear. We need a solution which takes future need in to consideration.

Currently we are building urban infrastructure to match the increased demand and I propose to reverse the trend. We should inverse this development model and ask city management (municipalities) to develop capacity in infrastructure before allowing any new apartment complexes or corporate office spaces to be built in a city. This model gives incentive to small cities with better infrastructure to attract businesses to set their offices there. Who knows that in long run, this model can also help us with “inclusive growth”.