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Journalism of Courage
The track looms over Bangalores arterial Mahatma Gandhi Road like a promise hanging in the air,presiding over the urgent whirr of construction cranes and a spill of barricades and debris below.
In less than 100 days,Metro trains will glide along overhead,ferrying passengers along a six-station stretch. In Bangalore,whose infrastructure is inversely proportionate to its global brand image,many see Namma Metro (Our Metro in Kannada) as the most electrifying advance since the birth of its software industry here some three decades ago.
The smooth swish of the station escalators,the hushed sigh preceding arriving trains and the musical ding announcing door closings will soon be the sounds that herald Bangalores rather-delayed entry into the ranks of modern cities.
The trigger has been pressed,we are now counting down to the launch in double-digit days, says N Sivasailam,Managing Director of the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation,standing just across the street from Namma Metros central Gandhi station. The view from the station with the majestic Vidhana Soudha on one side and Trinity Church on the other is breathtaking.
Civil works will finish this month,systems will start working by end February,safety trials will commence in three weeks,the low-key Sivasailam counts off on his fingers. Over 3,000 construction workers are racing to complete the first stretch.
Namma Metro has already changed the citys downtown skyline,its largest station towering over a busy,commercial stretch. The Metro will be iconic of Bangalore for the next 100 years, says Sivasailam,who some call Bangalores E Sreedharan,after the techno-architect of New Delhis subway system.
Sivasailam shrugs off the comparison,saying: Everybody knows that the first American president was George Washington,but who remembers the second?
Bangalores metro model,he says,is to go about in a business-as-usual fashion and develop a template for metro projects in other Indian cities.
In Bangalore,among the worlds fastest growing cities,millions of dreams ride on the success of the project. A successful Namma Metro will catapult the city into the league of vibrant global cities, avers Sivasailam,an engineering graduate from Delhi University and a Masters in social planning from the London School of Economics.
Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa and Union Urban Development Minister Jaipal Reddy are expected to make a maiden trip on Namma Metro on Republic Day.
When its entire first phase,a 42-kilometer stretch,is complete in 2013,the project will cost upwards of Rs 11,609 crore. When fully complete,190 km of metro lines will criss-cross the city.
For Bangalores public-transport-challenged millions,caught in ceaseless traffic jams on constricted roads,that will be money well spent. The plan,design,execution and safety standards of the project are of global standards,says Namma Metros finance head Vasanth Rao.
The project,with delays and cost over-runs (first phase cost has doubled from the 2005 estimate) typical of Indias publicly funded infrastructure projects,has faced some tough challenges over land acquisition,environmental damage and routing. The Namma Metro team says it is bracing itself for a fresh one: shifting the Ambedkar statue from near the Vidhana Soudha to facilitate construction might set off a political furore.
Even in its limited first stretch,a million people could potentially use the subway when it launches. Realistically,the expected users are in the region of 100,000. The projects future expansion will solely depend on how Bangalores citizens take to the first phase,says Sivasailam.
Going by the mood,he will have little to fear: Bangalore already thinks of its new subway train system as nothing short of a marvel.
