Variously acclaimed as the garden city and Silicon Valley of India for having emerged as the epicentre of the country’s thriving ICT (information communication technologies) industry contributing 42 percent of ICT services exports annually (Rs.4 lakh crore), Bengaluru is slowly, but inexorably grinding to a halt. The prosperity of the garden city whose population has swelled to 14 million currently, is smothered by streams of automotive vehicles (2.3 million cars and 11 million mobikes); rising air pollution; acute water shortage; persistent misgovernance; institutionalised corruption; bankrupt academy and middle class unable to ideate necessary solutions to prevent slow death of the city.

At the helm of this city gradually sliding into the slough of despond, is the state’s reckless Congress government elected to power in 2023 and aided and abetted by the country’s most corrupt bureaucracy. In the state’s budget of 2025-26, the government gave away freebies (free-of-charge electricity, bus rides and food rations) valued at Rs.52,000 crore from its total revenue receipt of Rs.2.92 crore. As a result the state doesn’t have sufficient resources to build flyovers, tunnels, increase public transport capacity to improve road traffic flow, and is unable to hire sufficient traffic police to monitor the city’s rampaging road traffic. Consequently, the average car speed in its gridlocked road network is 10 kmph, the lowest worldwide.

It’s also pertinent to note that Bengaluru hosts over 1,000 science and humanities institutions of higher education, including the prestigious Indian Institute of Science (estb.1908), IIM-Bangalore (1973) and 67,000 ICT companies. Yet no worthwhile solution to its multiplying woes has emerged from these bastions of knowledge as the garden city continues its dystopian descent.