BIAL should have been Deve Gowda Int Airport

So guys, i got the dope on BIAL at Devanahalli and why it is so dam far away from Bangalore city. I did speak a bit about it in one of my previous posts. It is a really cool airport and you can easily spend all the time in the world there eating, shopping, surfing, bird watching...and what have you...well that is only after you reach there battling the traffic for 2-3 hours. S0, you finally reach cursing whoever thought of constructing the airport there...nowhere!!

So, who are you cursing - Mr Deve Gowda (DG) of course! Who else can you curse for the state of affairs in Karnataka! So the story i hear from some socially and politically awake Kannadigas goes like this (if this story isnt entirely correct and you know another story pls let us know)- When DG was the PM for some time, the proposal to come up with a new airport was doing the rounds and search for land was on...and DG proposed that the new airport would be at Devanahalli. Now why Devanahalli? Devanahalli is a village and has lots and lots of land all around and nothing else. And who owns all the land??? - the gowdas of course (did u hear about their benami assets? ok more on that in another post) ...so the far sighted politician that DG is, he saw a wonderful opportunity to rake in big big bucks for himself and his family...so once an airport comes up land prices shoot through the sky and the clan rolls in money..yay!

So, while the clan is having fun we are cursing and frustrated spending all our time, energy, and money cutting across the city to this sleep village. But for a man who eats, sleeps, breaths politics, you and me of course do not matter to him! He is a political animal, whose interests are permanent.

And you may know that Devanahalli is not the only case in Karnataka. People like DG and Kumaraswamy own most of the land in and around Bangalore, Hasan, parts of western ghats, iron rich Bellary district and many other parts of Karnataka that are strategically important. Well, in a way you may argue that such areas will see development of some kind due to the their vested interests, but I have my reservations on development in this manner...more on that some day!