Information technology companies and professionals were on Thursday urged to reorient their corporate social responsibility (CSR) towards creating social infrastructure for Bangalore.
‘Large presence'
Participating in the ‘Destination Bangalore' summit organised by the Global Initiative for Restructuring Environment and Management (GIREM), V. Naresh Narasimhan, managing partner of Venkataramanan Associates, said IT professionals now account for nearly one million of city's population. Another three million people are directly or indirectly depending on them.
Having such a large and influential presence, the community should directly participate in development activities instead of adopting a school or rejuvenating a lake, he said.
Mr. Narasimhan said, “There has been a general perception among the people that IT professionals are there just to get something from the city and not to give back. They should do away this perception,” he said.
To this, promoters and stakeholders of GIREM said they were prompt in paying taxes and cess and it is the Government's duty to create social infrastructure. To this, Mr. Narasimhan said they should be direct parties to development. He was one of the panellists at the session on ‘Metro, the backbone of Bangalore'.
Speaking about the effectiveness of metro and other modes of public transport, ABIDe member and urban expert Ashwin Mahesh said the Government should get the finances right to make sure that value addition is captured properly.
The metro should be used as a vehicle to get social gaps filled than just for daily commuting. For effective functioning of urban infrastructure, including public transport, the metropolitan region governance authority as well as a land transport authority should be in place, he said.
Mr. Mahesh said, “Only one-tenth of the city is impacted by the metro if we go by the statistics. The problem is that social infrastructure has not been created to accommodate over 1,000 people who migrate to the city every day, outside the metro zone.”
‘Agent of change'
Ravi Chandran, member of Bangalore City Connect Foundation, said: “We need to start thinking what the metro means, be proactive in our thinking and understand that it is not merely an engineering project, but an agent of social, cultural, and economic change for our city. It is about creating jobs and so on.” In the session on fire and safety, D. Rashid, Deputy Director, Karnataka Fire and Emergency Services, regretted that fire preparedness audit by companies was not being done once in a quarter as mandated. However, the department was mapping out the extended city to deal with fire safety issues.
