Gated Communities: Us versus Them, Literally

For two weeks, we experienced living in a very upscale gated community in Bangalore. I won’t bore you with the details of all the facilities available, but it was comparable to the best communities in Europe or the US. Ours in Koramanala (a suburb of Bangalore) was called The Acropolis, and I am confident it was far more luxurious than its original namesake in Athens ever was.

The security procedure to enter the premises is very tight, and the label is very apt – a truly gated community. Even though I was a guest there, the daunting wrought-iron gates caused me some trepidation the first few times that I walked in.

An entire army of workers (security, maids, cooks, drivers, plumbers, electricians and the like) keep the owners and their families humming. Clearly, the over 200 families who live inside lead lives of great comfort.

And yet, there is another side to all this. I guess if you dig deep enough, there is always a flip side to everything apparently good.

Right from my balcony I could view the entrance to PVR Cinemas in Koramangala, which was right next door. There I could see a very young woman begging. I had seen her hanging around, outside our community gate almost every day. She didn’t quite look to be an adult, but she had not one but two kids – a toddler she carried on her hip, and a little girl who approached everyone with her hands outstretched perennially. Their livelihood depended on the handouts of those who live inside Acropolis.

While this gated community was created exclusively to keep the likes of this woman out, I worry that instead, it will create more of the likes of her. Lots and lots of opportunities for a select few, none for the rest.

The gated community’s Owners’ association (which I could see from the notice boards was extremely active) only focused on things inside the community to the exclusion of everything else. That is why the roads inside were so good, while it was nearly impossible to walk in the footpath right outside. (Textbook NIMBY.)

It is easy for me to say this (being an outsider) but I strongly feel that the owners’ associations need to include those living outside the gated communities as well. Not out of altruism, but because of enlightened self-interest, a term I learned from Paul Collier.

We don’t need a degree in Urban Development to envision the proliferation of gated colonies. Imagine a city that has become an archipelago of gated communities, which are all oases of luxury, connected to each other by guarded roads that serve as lifelines. But outside this system there would be just a miasma of debris and chaos. The inequality between those inside and outside will become unbridgeable and eventually untenable. That unstable equilibrium would collapse.

And surely, that can’t be a good thing.

No Cup of Coffee Between Rs. 20 and 35

You can’t easily find a cup of coffee priced between Rs. 20 and 35 in Bangalore, and this surprised me.

I was able to find lots of places where a cup of coffee was Rs 15 or cheaper, and several others where it was Rs, 40 or higher.

At the lowest end of the price spectrum (that I was able to find) is the three-Rupee mini-cup. This is really only 2 ounces or so, and I will take this in a real pinch when I really need the hit. . Slightly higher up, for 5 or 6 Rupees, there is filter-coffee in the ubiquitous “darshinis” or fast-food places. Because I am not confident of how well they wash the stainless steel cups, I always ask for a plastic one. The coffee is invariably good, and is actually my choice among all price ranges. In Nescafe kiosks, coffee is anywhere from 7 to 10 Rupees. In slightly better sit-in restaurants, a cup is priced usually from 12 to 15 Rupees. I have found no correlation between price and taste in these restaurants. It is whatever the market can bear.

Between Rs. 15 and 35 is this mysterious price gap.

Once you go over to the other side of 35 Rupees, you can get lots of fancy coffee. Clearly, these places sell the ambience, since I personally find the lower priced filter coffee to be a lot tastier. But these cafés are good places to meet business acquaintances, new friends and old college-mates, to catch up in leisure. There are also the higher priced (more than Rs 100) cappuccinos, espressos, and Café Americanos, but there you are paying for the idea of coffee in a very fancy place.

In Bangalore, I haven’t seen any Starbucks at all, though I haven’t made up my mind about whether this is good or bad. Café Coffee Day has more than stepped in to fill that role.

So why is there this big gap in the pricing? Here’s my unscientific theory. I suspect that the middle class, who would have been the natural target customers for the 25- and 30-Rupee cups of coffee have upgraded. Having come into lots of disposable income thanks to the IT and the real-estate pricing boom, they have upgraded and shifted right in the coffee price continuum, leaving this gap.

Taken for a ride in Bangalore

I’ve always felt that people exaggerate when talking about how unscrupulous auto-rickshaw drivers are. But perhaps I am looking at the world through rose-colored glasses.

We had taken a rickshaw to RT Nagar Police Station. Our relatives in RT Nagar said that it should cost no more than 25 Rupees. And that the distance would be around 4 kms.

This particular rickshaw had a digital meter, which showed not just the fare but also the distance traveled.

After we set off, we had already traveled 7 kms and RT Nagar was nowhere in sight. So we pulled out our map. Instead of traveling essentially due west, the driver (after figuring out that we didn’t have a clue but the streets of Bangalore) had turned southwest, and presumably was planning to turn northwest to reach our destination.

I knew he was taking us for a ride when we crossed the railway tracks once, and then crossed it again real soon.

“Where are you taking us? We should have reached a long time ago.” I said.
“Sir, there are a lot of one-way roads,” he said. We were going through small roads and if there were one-way streets, we didn't see them.
“It should only have been 4 or 5 kilometers. I am not going to pay you what the meter says.” It was not so much the amount but the fact that he was trying to outright cheat us.

After a very long ride, we reached RT Nagar police station. When he stopped to let us off, his digital meter showed 11.1 kms.
“Let’s go to the police station and settle this. I am not going to pay you what the meter says,” I said.
“Pay me whatever you wish to, sir,” he said.

I offered him half of what the meter showed, and to my surprise he accepted without a murmur of protest.

When we take autos now, we try and fix the fare beforehand, rather than relying on the meter.