Gated communities or Mini Nations

Few month's back, the city of Bangalore was shocked by the news of of a 10 year old loosing her life to electrocution while playing near the apartment swimming pool, because of loose wiring which was not attended by the facilities management team and the anger of  500 plus residents was on the volunteer Management Committee members, this led to an FIR being registered against the MC, facilities management team. Especially the anger centred on the President of the Management Committee, whom the residents blamed for delay in the repair of the loose wiring in-spite of repeated complaints.

After a month of investigation, the police arrested the volunteer MC President, the property manager, the electrician and the plumbing staff.

There has been similar incident of electrocution in an upscale Hyderabad apartment complex last year where a less than 10 year old boy, lost his life while playing and touch the pole which has loose wiring.

The speed of urbanization and migration of people to cities, concentrated employment opportunities, primarily driven by IT and IT services. Has led to demand of habitats which meet the growing aspirations of middle class which crave for mass affluent lifestyle.

Th cities have become mega polis and the paucity of land in the cities, has led to vertical structures, lack of well connected infrastructure is also pushing people to pay high rental or higher per sq.ft higher price to buy roofs and in gated communities which provide miniature of civics facilities which are well managed.

These civics facilities offered in these communities are  parks within the communities, sports infrastructure, clean and layered roads, integrated markets, in few communities and few offer walk to work with commercial establishments within the communities.

There is a clear need to have better public civic infrastructure being made available for the growing population which can live with present state infrastructure, which primarily is a states responsibility.

These responsibilities are now done in clusters within the large cosmopolis, gated communities which boast of all civic amenities provided and funded by the residents.

Are these RWAs (Resident welfare associations) letting the state disown its responsibility,  while the volunteer residents form the association or a co-op housing society based on the law of the state government and these are governed by the act passed by the state.

The onus of managing these resident complexes lies on the Management committee, who do this on voluntary basis and without any remuneration but the scale and magnitude of the operation is as big as a village or a tahsil in few cases.

If you are part of the resident groups on whatsapp and emails, you would have seen all types of asks from 

water flow in the bathroom, to the voltage fluctuation in the bedroom, the puppy poop in common area, the summons from pollution control boards to managing the statutory bodies, everything is tagged to the management committees, with age of these building growing, the challenges only magnify and the patience levels of the residents reduces, leading to a constant tussle.

In few cases there are barrage of cases filed within these associations, against the members, between management committee and residents, this leads to breakdown of services and untoward incidents.

In the above mentioned incident, the volunteer President has been jailed for negligence and  lapses along with the property manager. This has created a fear among the other RWAs and people withdrawing themselves from the voluntary services. There aren't clear laws to protect the office bearers of the management committees in such situations.

There is an urgent need to formulate more comprehensive laws to regulate these RWAs and have clear responsibilities defined with laws that can govern the office bearers, which also safeguard them in cases where their voluntary services are  put them at risk.

With the economy growing and more and more migration happening to cities, the number of RWAs are just going to grow. 

The state also needs to relook at these habitats and take onus of the core civic amenities in these RWAs. There needs to be better infrastructure of Roads, Water, Electricity, Hygiene & Cleanliness  in the exsiting resident locations. Metro connectivity also helps decongest the CBDs, town planning and approvals of SEZ, Commercial complexes need to be more thoughtful to ensure that these spread out.

Till these measures are taken, there will be mini nations, in every street with their set of challenges which are being addressed by group of volunteers and are self funded by residents. But these measures hinge on a thing thread of safety which these volunteers are relying on.