> That is because citizens themselves don't care. This isn't about citizens. Fundamentally, residents in a mega-city like Bangalore simply do not matter in a p

> That is because citizens themselves don't care. This isn't about citizens. Fundamentally, residents in a mega-city like Bangalore simply do not matter in a parliamentary democracy like Karnataka. Bangalore doesn't make you CM, so there's no incentive for Karnataka's politicians to invest in it. > Every time a political party Urban management is not about political party - it's about bureaucracy. INC, BJP, JDS, etc can win elections, but local government such as public works are apolitical. The issue is states in India do NOT devolve planning commissions to local government - just about every function that a city would have (Zoning, Permitting, Land Acquisition) are managed by state level planning commissions. India is unique in the level of centralization that state level governments have. > Quite the opposite, every city in Karnataka Karnataka is not the rest of India. Bangalore is notoriously bad at urban planning and management. The fact that much poorer Indore can outcompete Bangalore in cleanliness and urban management is a testament to the fact that it's about local government. Also, ime, Delhi NCR (not just Delhi and Noida but also ancillary towns like Kurkushetra and Karnal), Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, and Coimbatore have all steadily gotten much better over the past 10 years. Bangalore on the other hand has remained underdeveloped due to land mafias. > Thats mostly because fewer the people, lesser hands there are to throw garbage and pollute, its just that scale of grotesque is reduced not the phenomenon itself. These are multi-million person cities with populations similar to Bangalore barely 10-15 years ago, yet they are still cleaner and better managed than Bangalore circa 2010. While population does play a role, Karnataka is unique in that the JDS admin in the 1990s removed almost all urban governance responsibilities from Bangalore and moved it to either the State Commission (eg. zoning) or privatized (eg. garbage collection - but this was because of the World Bank).