Overview

The state of Karnataka is the eighth largest in the country both in terms of its population and its area. Its capital city, Bangalore, is now classified as a mega city and has a population of over five million inhabitants. The last five decades have been a period of rapid growth for Bangalore with a proliferation of multinational companies choosing to locate their operations in the city and its environs in industrial products, consumer durables and more recently information technology.

Bangalore has a unique status on the global map, identified as a nucleus of business, education, and science and information technology. It is recognized all over the world as a major technology hub and the IT capital of the country. Like other metropolitan cities in India, Bangalore has experienced a very fast rate of urbanization and phenomenal growth of population within the past five decades. The city is facing problems of transition from a calm and peaceful city to a busy urban agglomeration.

With an overall rapid increase in population coupled with the seemingly irreversible flow of people from rural to urban areas, Bangalore has been acquiring unplanned and uncontrolled squatter settlements – i.e. slums. The glass walled computer – ready office complexes, exclusive shopping malls and entertainment facilities that rival the best in the country contrast with the dense squatter settlements and their very poor services in central areas of the city.