Most cities, most Indian cities anyway are populous. This causes the number of civic officials to number of people ratio to be low. Bengaluru is in the same league as Tokyo, London and New York.

City	Population
Bengaluru	8.4M (as of 2011 Census)
Tokyo	9M (as of 2024)
London	9M (as of 2021 Census)
New York City	8.4M (as of July 2024)

You can see that we count among the largest metropolitan areas. In fact, we have probably exceeded that in the decade and a half since the last census.

Sidenote, the staggering number of people in the city, coupled with a woefully inadequate budget, BBMP hardly has an ability to offer civic services at par with the similarly sized metropolises.

New York's budget for 2024 was $111.6B. Bengaluru, $1.5B.

What's a reasonable "unit" that comprises a city.

To be able to hold your civic officers to account, it is essential to:

1. know who they are and locate their offices to register complaints and demonstrate support. Let's call this the WHO to hold to account

2. be able to comprehend the nature of projects being undertaken and reason about the impacts it may have. Let's call this the HOW to hold them to account.

Armed with the "who" and the "how", you would need a WHEN, but that involves elections and a mayoral system and a lot of structural overhaul. Let's set that aside for now.

What is a neighbourhood?

Let's define neighbourhood before we discuss why that's an appropriate size of a unit that will give you the tools for the WHO and HOW.

neighbourhood n. self-sufficient, developed area of land which does not have a major transit corridor cutting through it.

An example of such a neighbourhood would be HSR layout. It is bounded by the Outer Ring Road, Hosur Road and the Agara army area. All the roads within HSR Layout can be classified as 'internal' to HSR. It does not have any large traffic corridors cutting through it.

A second example could be CV Raman Nagar. Bounded by Old Madras Road and Suranjan Das Road, but no major road cutting through it.

A counter-example or one that does not fit the bill would be Marathahalli. It has two major roads cutting through it. Old Airport Road and Outer Ring Road.

Neighbourhood self-sufficiency: goods and services within reach

The self-sufficient nature of a neighbourhood means that its inhabitants, residents and work-related occupants are able to avail commonplace services and purchase everyday goods within the neighbourhood itself.

Everyday goods would be groceries, stationery, clothes, medicine and other things you need on a day-to-day basis. Commonplace services are schools, restaurants, recreation, areas to hang-out in.

Coupled with the 'no traffic corridor' part of the definition, it means that the inhabitants do not have to merge into a traffic corridor to avail goods or services.

Civic services within reach

Within a neighbourhood, it should be abundantly clear who the civic officials are. We don't mean the person themselves, but the office. Common government operated services are:

1. electricity supply and related infrastructure
2. water supply, sewerage, drainage
3. PNG supply if relevant.
4. Parks, lakes and other recreational areas.
5. Transit infrastructure like roads, parking, bus bays, suburban train stations
6. Telecom line infrastructure if managed by the city.

Service delivery is must have a feedback loop. The delivery of the service is important, but so is the ability to register grievances about the service or lack-thereof.

Imagine the water main is leaking into your property or onto the road and being unable to get the required engineer involved. Or not knowing who to get in touch with.

A second way to register feedback is