The Bangalore City Police (BCP) is headed by a Police Commissioner, who is an Indian Police Service (IPS) officer. Bangalore City Police has six geographic zones, and includes Traffic Police, City Armed Reserve, Central Crime Branch and City Crime Record Bureau. The Bangalore City Police runs 86 police stations in the city, including two all-women police stations [21].

Current concerns

For most of the period after Indian independence, Bangalore was a B-1 status city, and was not considered to be one of India’s “4 major metropolitan cities”. The city’s roads, therefore, were not designed to accommodate the massive traffic that now prevails in Bangalore.

The Bangalore Mahanagara Palike has attempted to overcome some of the shortcomings in the road systems by imposing one-way traffic systems and attempting to build a flyover(overpass) system in the city. The development of apartment complexes and townships negating the positive impact of the Outer Ring Road that was created to ease congestion in the city. The Hosur Road, which connects Bangalore to the Electronics City, is one of the most congested roads in the city. The road is also part of the National Highway (NH7) and therefore witnesses heavy truck traffic as well.

Bangalore’s infrastructural woes have led to protests by students and IT workers in the city. In July 2004 Wipro’s Azim Premji threatened to pull his company out of the city unless there was a drastic improvement in infrastructure over the next few years. In 2005, however, the Central and State Governments allocated sizeable funding from their annual budgets towards the improvement of Bangalore’s infrastructure.

Hindustan Aeronautics Limited owns and operates Bangalore’s HAL Airport that is used for commercial civil aviation by the Government of Karnataka. Most airports are controlled by the Airports Authority of India. This led to a prolonged three way tussle for operational ownership between the HAL, the Government of Karnataka and the Indian Air Force, which tests many of its indigenous aircraft there.

A full scale international airport was planned at Devanahalli, 30 kilometres from Bangalore. The project, initially conceived in 1991, was repeatedly delayed due to red tape and tussles between the private companies involved and the Central and State Governments. Clearance for the construction of the USD 288 million airport was eventually granted in June 2004. The major stakeholders of this project include Siemens-Zurich Airport-LandT consortium, Airports Authority of India and Karnataka State Investment and Industrial Development Corporation. Construction work on the airport began in March 2005.