Buying a House Without Roads: The Great Urban Illusion
My family and I were invited for a house-warming ceremony yesterday. My distant cousin has finally managed to buy a flat in one of the recently sprung-up areas of Bangalore.I was actually looking forward to the visit. I was curious to see the ‘new’ Bangalore — the one constantly advertised as the city’s future. I should have known better. Disappointing would be a mild word. Disgusting is closer to the truth.
The Reality Behind the Gated Promise
Crawling traffic. Non-existent roads. No proper water supply. Erratic electricity. Difficult access to even basic community services. Zero access to immediate medical care. The list writes itself, and still feels incomplete.What struck me most was not just the absence of infrastructure, but how casually it has been accepted. This is not a temporary inconvenience, not a phase of transition. It is a way of living that people have convinced themselves is normal — even aspirational.
Why Are People Still Buying?
And yet, flats in these areas are selling like there is no tomorrow. Why? The great real estate rush in Bangalore has convinced people that owning four walls is more important than what surrounds them.The logic is always deferred to the future. Roads will come. Hospitals will come. Schools will come. Water will come. Planning is replaced by hope, and hope is sold very efficiently by builders and brokers.
The Cost of Normalising Inconvenience
And because nobody protests, nobody demands, nobody insists — nobody plans. When residents accept dust roads, water tankers, power cuts, and two-hour commutes as inevitable, there is no pressure on authorities or developers to deliver anything better.A Vicious Cycle That Refuses to Break
It is a vicious cycle. People buy because prices will rise. Infrastructure is delayed because people have already bought. Accountability disappears because possession has already been handed over.This cycle may never be broken — not because it cannot be, but because inconvenience has been fully normalised in the pursuit of ownership.
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