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All is well, but oh, the Bangalore roads: Maran

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DQC Bureau
New Update

Poor roads and traffic congestion are the only matters which plague Bangalore, according to Dayanidhi
Maran, Union minister for communication and information technology. In his reply to a special mention by Rajya Sabha member B K
Hariprasad, Maran said Bangalore had plenty of IT infrastructure in terms of power, telecom connectivity, water and state-of-the-art IT parks, but road
connectivity was a concern. 

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Bangalore has 23 lakh vehicles with about 750 new ones added daily to the
already choked roads. The IT industry and the State government have been at
loggerheads over infrastructure facilities in the State. 

The Bangalore Chamber of Industry and Commerce had even threatened to boycott
the State's premier IT event, BangaloreIT.in in protest against the inadequate
infrastructure in the city. The recent rains had further exposed the fragile
infrastructure of Bangalore. 

Maran said that the State authorities are taking action to broaden and
resurface roads wherever possible. Long-term projects such as construction of
road over bridges, flyovers and grade separators were in the pipeline. 

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Projects like the Bangalore International Airport, Bangalore Metro, Hi-tech
city, Hardware Technology Park, the elevated four-lane expressway connecting the
Electronics City-Peripheral ring road, and the Cauvery fourth state second-phase
work to increase water supply by over 500 million liters a day would be in
operation in the next two to three years' time. 

Bangalore city had seen phenomenal growth of IT companies during the last
seven or eight years. There were 680 IT companies in 1998 and the number had
increased to 1,584 now, of which 622 were MNCs contributing to almost 25% of the
GDP of the state. 

The minister said that the total export from Karnataka for 2004-05 was worth
Rs 27,600, crore accounting for one third of the total IT exports from the
country. The IT sector had provided direct employment to 300,000 and indirect
employment to over 10 lakh people. The pay bill of these companies was over Rs
10,000 crore and the city was the fastest growing in Asia with a population of
65 lakh and a floating population of 15 lakh. 

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