Bengaluru’s new wards run on an old service network
Despite the expansion of Bengaluru's administrative wards from 198 to 369, the city has failed to provide essential civic facilities like health centers and ward offices in the new areas. Officials cite a lack of available government land and human resources as the primary obstacles to infrastructure development.
Why it matters
The gap between administrative expansion and service delivery highlights the challenges of urban governance and infrastructure planning in rapidly growing Indian cities.
Let alone a primary healthcare centre or access to an Indira Canteen for an affordable meal, several facilities residents would expect to be situated closer to home, such as ward offices where they can report civic issues, are missing in the wards added to Bengaluru over the past year.
The Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA), which completed a year after replacing the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) with five city corporations, increased the number of wards from 198 to 369. But while 171 new wards were added to the civic map, there has been no corresponding expansion of facilities such as primary health centres (PHCs), Indira Canteens or even ward offices, the local touchpoints through which the five-corporation system was expected to bring civic services closer to residents.
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