Others have other explanations, like J. Shanmuganath, a political advocate for lower-caste Bangaloreans. The 1995 conflagration apparently was an accident, but it's widely known that other slumdwellers have set their own homes ablaze in a desperate bid for help. At the Istanbul conference, some may point to Singapore, where most people live in government-built apartments bought at subsidized prices. But that city-state is tiny, minutely planned and affluent. But the squatters' needs go beyond brick and mortar, just as Bangalore's problems extend beyond the worst slums.
Water flows to city residents only two to three hours a day.
Electricity supplies are little better - major industries are enduring a 50 percent power cut. The air grows more polluted daily, filled with fumes from 1.6 million motor vehicles, a number that ballooned by one-third in five years. Plainly, Bangalore didn't anticipate its explosive growth. Neither did dozens of other overburdened cities across the Third World. Severe water shortages are likely soon in Cairo, Egypt, in Lagos, Nigeria, and in Sao Paulo, Brazil, among others.