Bangalore: The Time Has Come To Stand Up And Be Counted

Over the last two decades, Bangalore, a grand old city with a priceless heritage, has re-invented itself as a vibrant urban agglomeration of people contributing to the nation’s productivity and wealth in an unprecedented way. No other Indian city has grown quite as dizzyingly and transformed itself quite as unrecognisably.

Many good things have come to us as a result, but inevitably so have the bad. Spurious governance is one of the worst. In re-inventing itself, Bangalore had the chance to fashion its new avatar along the best possible lines. Instead we’ve veered toward worst practises along almost every civic parameter. Bad karma, perhaps, but karma too can be deflected - and change is on the way for our city.

A few months ago, a group called Bangalore Political Action Committee (B.PAC) was established to spearhead the drive towards clean, competent, and responsible governance at every level in Bangalore. It’s originators are some of the best known and respected names in the city’s daily life, including Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Mohandas Pai, K Jairaj and many more. Our website http://www.bpac.in has all the names – and much more.

B.PAC’s raison d’etre is:

1. In India’s major cities, most of the Urban Educated, who are almost by definition the Middle Classes, do not vote. We think our vote is too small to make a difference, and that’s not entirely untrue – everywhere else except in Bangalore. Here things are different. An astonishing 40% of our electorate is Middle Class! As a voting bloc, that’s a tsunami waiting to happen. We must make it happen.

2. To do that we must leverage our numbers to elect committed, competent and incorrupt people to our governing bodies. We must set the governance of our city to standards that we deserve as a strong, educated, contributive people who will not accept incompetence, false promises, and unbridled corruption any more.

3. We need to swell the Bangalore voters’ lists with the Urban Educated, specially the new young voters, students and professionals, who have recently come of voting age. They are idealistic, committed, disgusted with the political & governance scene they’ve inherited. They want change, and why not? Our Bangalore is more their Bangalore.

4. And we need to identify, publicly name and support candidates who meet the standards we have set. We will support them no matter which party they belong to, because B.PAC is party agnostic.

B.PAC, along with several other civic activist bodies, has been running a drive to increase the registered voters in Bangalore. Apart from a widespread campaign on social media and in the popular media as well, we have run camps at scores of university campuses, workplace campuses, residential complexes. As on date, 415,000 application forms for new voters have been submitted.

It’s hard work, but Bangalore is worth it. We are all worth it.

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