No lessons learnt from 'Sister City'

Bangalore’s once earnest pursuit of a global city image had its civic agencies ink ‘Sister City’ partnerships with a few urban centres abroad. But the promise of learning from global best practises and implementing them here, even in a small way, never materialised.

As Bangalore on paper remained sisters with San Francisco, Reno City and Cleveland in the United States, and Minsk in Belarus, the partnerships led only to foreign junkets for a select few.   

Consider this: It is now about four years since the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the City and County of San Francisco in October 2009. Identified for partnerships were areas of water, sewage, solid waste management, parks, environment, health and education. But these largely remained on paper.

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission was to collaborate with the City’s water board and provide technical assistance in development of water, wastewater and power management systems.

Four years before it actually became a huge, almost insurmountable challenge, garbage and waste water issues were identified in the MoU and ways mentioned to combat them. The San Francisco Department of Environment had even offered technical help to develop “zero waste management systems,” a concept being tried out now.

For further collaborative action, programmes and technologies were identified for collection and processing of recyclables, compostable and digestible waste material, construction and demolition of debris, besides e-waste. Technologies for final disposal of the inert waste were also part of the agenda, which, however, never materialised. The MoU expired on November 20, 2012.   

The fate of this tie-up was much similar to Bangalore’s earlier partnership with Reno City in Nevada, US. In June 2003, the then Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BMP) had signed the MoU for integrating strategic planning with Bangalore’s development. The two cities were to collaborate on information management, preventive road and sidewalk maintenance practices, participation of citizens in ward-level planning, establishment of a one-stop facilitation centre for citizens, and management of sanitary landfills.

Nothing much happened. Although a former BMP commissioner visited the American city, a former mayor had to cancel his trip following a controversy. “Sister City concept is a good idea provided there is a political and administrative will to implement the ideas shared. We are not serious about adopting best practices. The tie-ups are just an excuse for the authorities concerned to go to that city,” notes V Ravichandar, an urban expert from Feedback Consulting. 

Bangalore had an even earlier ‘Sister-City’ connection with Minsk, the capital of Belarus in 1989. To commemorate that partnership, the Queen’s Road Circle was renamed Minsk Square. Back in Minsk, a Bangalore Square found its place inside a park on the city’s outskirts. It was reportedly the only place in Minsk where public meetings were allowed.