Every day, as residents of north Bengaluru leave home for work, they are filled with deep dread and agony, especially those who must cross the Bagalur Cross junction. The junction connects residents to several colleges, universities, and schools, all of them accessible only by crossing this chokepoint. At any time of day, it is packed with buses, cars, autos, taxis, and people.

Crossing it is not for everyone. The misery begins once you are in the area or plan to cross it. On normal days with less traffic, crossing the junction takes about 40-45 minutes; on other days, it can take 1-2 hours or more. It looms so large that every day must be planned around it.

Not every junction in this city demands such unyielding attention. Half-built flyovers, such as the one in Yelahanka (the construction of this 1.8 km structure began during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it remains unfinished) or the one in Koramangala (which has stood as a monument for 10 years), draw none. Residents of these localities have learned to live with them and ignore their existence. Urban life has taken a detour through these half-built structures and moved ahead.

Bengaluru residents are expected to show the same indifference to Bagalur Cross, but that is hard to do, and urban life has perhaps not found a way around it.

These are not the only such points in Bengaluru; the entire city is laden with chokepoints. The anthropology of chokepoints argues that, in the context of global movements, chokepoints slow and filter them. It also argues that chokepoints should be encouraged more, to counter societies in late-stage capitalism that are beset and obsessed with speed.

But in cities of the Global South, with their massive population surges and half-built infrastructure, one is forced to slow down to the point of hopelessness. These half-built structures and choked roads symbolise the illusion of hope and aspiration to which citizens are tied but which never materialises.

Right to the city

Today’s cities are overflowing with people, and massive physical structures are added to them every day in the name of urban development. Who is this development for, and who has the right to the city?

In Bengaluru, parts of Indiranagar and Koramangala reflect what a city promises its citizens: wide roads shaded by huge canopies on both sides, covered potholes, easy access to basic amenities, pedestrian-friendly pavements, and so on. But with overpriced rents and security deposits, distance from workplaces, and persistent traffic jams, only a small section of people can afford to live here. Everyone else encounters Bagalur Cross, or junctions like it, daily.

How, then, is urban life characterised for its residents? Apart from the physical, mental, and sensory overload it causes its residents, city life is also an unjust and unequal space.

The structural design and inequality prevalent in the country force people from rural and other urban areas to migrate to metropolises in search of jobs, education, and a livelihood. But do Indian cities have the infrastructure for such a massive population? City life today, especially in India’s metropolises, is a life of torment and suffering. Why should citizens endure this, and what does it tell us about development discourse in South Asian countries?

Postcolonial cities across the world, especially in South Asia, are characterised by such half-built infrastructure; they are everywhere. The contractor-state nexus is common to all of them. In Bengaluru itself, a city of 741 sq km with a booming population estimated at 14.8 million, every locality has physical infrastructure that was once envisioned but never completed.

This uneven development, inequality, and injustice are symptomatic of the larger discourse on the relationship between the state and the citizenry. The helplessness and alienation of citizens are evident in how they negotiate these half-built, choked structures daily, when they are forced to ride across roads full of potholes, live electrical wires, jam-packed and overflowing streets, swarming drain holes during rain, and so on.

A few days ago, five people were injured in transformer explosions at different locations in Bengaluru, one of them, Bagalur Cross. Such dangerous, random events keep happening across the country, and there is no accountability. How is accountability to be established if the government itself becomes predatory, as in the recent protests? What, then, should citizens expect from governments if the basic rights to life and liberty are not intact?

Urban life is alienating, and structurally kept that way, so that citizens remain lost in making sense of it and never complain, never ask for accountability. And if they ever manage to climb out of this rut, state machinery is always there to break their backs.

The question remains: who should have the right to the city, and why are citizens forced to grapple with such issues every day? The chaos is no longer beautiful; it is dangerous and deadly, and its consequences are for everyone to see.

Archana Pathak is an assistant professor at the Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Bengaluru.

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