Why Is Bangalore's Traffic So Bad? - Thirumal Govindraj

There is a sentence in our podcast with Thirumal Govindraj, CEO of RMZ Office and RMZ NXT, that I have been carrying with me since the recording.

“70 percent of the problem is the people. Everyone blames the infrastructure. But 70 percent of the problem is the people.”

This is the kind of statement Indian audiences are not used to hearing from a real estate CEO. The standard industry position is that traffic problems are about infrastructure. Thirumal said that too. He documented it. He also refused to stop there. The conversation went somewhere more uncomfortable.

Let me walk you through what he told us.

The Math Of The Growth

The first half of the segment was the macro story.

“If today 80 million square feet of commercial real estate gets absorbed in India, 30 to 35 percent gets absorbed in Bangalore. That is 24 million square feet a year.”

24 million square feet per year. To put that in human terms, he was direct.

“24 million square feet absorbed in a single city, year on year, means 200,000 to 300,000 people getting jobs and coming into the city. The growth has been faster than the infrastructure.”

This is the structural reality that any honest Bangalore conversation has to start with. Every year, the equivalent of a small city is moving in. The roads, the water, the housing, were not built for that pace. The mismatch is the structural consequence of being the country’s most successful commercial corridor.

The Outer Ring Road Story

The middle of the segment was the origin story of how Bangalore’s main IT corridor came to be.

“In the early 90s, when Bangalore started, the government wanted Whitefield to become the hub. They did a joint venture with the Singapore government and they built ITPL.”

ITPL, the International Tech Park, was a genuine institutional moment for Indian IT infrastructure. It was, in Thirumal’s words, “one of the first times any state had actually brought in that kind of infrastructure.” The intention was clear. Whitefield was supposed to be Bangalore’s Silicon Valley.

It did not happen the way the planners imagined.

“Whitefield should have become the hub for IT. But the way things evolved politically, the infrastructure did not catch up with the development. The access to Whitefield was always an issue.”

The Outer Ring Road took over as the actual corridor because of its geography.

“Outer Ring Road is very strategically placed. If you take from east to south to north, it is the best corridor. It became a 15-kilometer stretch which is accessible from every part of the city.”

The first major corporate to bet on ORR was Intel.

“Intel bought land and they were developing their own campus.”

After Intel, the real estate developers followed. RMZ itself was one of the early movers with Eco Space.

“We were one of the first few who built a large park called Eco Space there. Now Outer Ring Road is famous for the quality and the heavy hitters of technology. And it is also famous for the traffic.”

The traffic line is the one Bangalore residents know best.

“People say you can reach faster to Bombay than you can cross Outer Ring Road.”

The Science Of The Roads

The second half of the segment was the more uncomfortable part.

“It is not that the roads are bad. It is the science behind the roads that is bad.”

This is the diagnosis that changes the conversation. The roads exist. The materials are sometimes good. The width is sometimes adequate. The problem is upstream.

“They need to fix a lot of the entry exits. We build fantastic highways. But our entry, exit into the highways are the worst. There are some places where you have proper clovers built. But most of the places, your highways are dangerous because you have shops on the side of the highways. People entering the highway, there is no proper entry, exit. Everybody takes wrong turns.”

This is the technical critique. Indian infrastructure has the right components. The design that integrates those components into a functional system is what is missing. A highway with shops on its sides is not really a highway. A flyover without controlled entry and exit is not really a flyover. The science of how the pieces fit together is what determines whether the infrastructure works.

The 70-30 Reframe

Then he made the move most real estate executives never make.

“70 percent of the problem is the people. Everyone blames the infrastructure. But 70 percent of the problem is the people. Nobody follows rules.”

In Indian public discourse, traffic problems are almost universally framed as government failure. The implication is always that if only the government performed better, the traffic would improve.

Thirumal’s reframing is not that this is wrong. The infrastructure deficit is real. He spent half the segment documenting it. His point is that the infrastructure deficit, even if fully solved, would still leave most of the problem unsolved, because the dominant cause of the dysfunction is behavioural.

“Why do we go to other countries and follow rules? Why don’t we follow rules in India?”

The Entitlement Principle

The answer he offered is the most psychologically precise part of the analysis.

“Because you can get away very easily here. You can cut corners and then you feel entitled. I am in my country, I should get away with what I am doing.”

This is the dynamic he names. The same person who follows traffic rules in Singapore, in Dubai, in Geneva, returns to India and does not. The change is not in the person. The change is in the social contract. Abroad, the person operates in a system where the rules are enforced. In India, the rules are enforced selectively and identity often provides exemption.

Once you know you can get away with breaking rules, the rational choice is to break them. Once enough people are breaking rules, the people who follow them are putting themselves at a disadvantage. The equilibrium is bad behaviour, even though everyone individually would prefer good behaviour.

The Walkway Example

The most concrete illustration of the dynamic was the walkway example.

“Today you build these great walkways. You will see people riding bikes on them. If you put these barricades for you not to go, then you will see it broken. Why?”

This is what happens to public infrastructure in a society where civic ownership is low. The walkway is built for pedestrians. It is appropriated by motorbike riders. The barricades meant to prevent this are broken. The infrastructure cannot function as intended because the social contract that should enforce its intended use does not hold.

The example is small. The pattern is large. It applies to flyovers, to traffic lanes, to highway entry points, to no-honking zones, to one-way streets.

The Pride Argument

The closing argument was the most piercing.

“Why is your car so well-maintained? Because you take pride of it and it is your hard-earned money. So why can’t you? It is the government’s hard-earned tax money. Why destroy it?”

This is the framing that should be at the centre of every Indian civic education curriculum. The car is private property, paid for with one’s own money, maintained because the owner sees themselves in it. The public infrastructure is collective property, paid for with the same money in a different form. The lack of ownership is psychological, not financial. The infrastructure was funded by the same person who funded their car.

The Public-Private Design Proposal

His constructive closing was the proposal for how to fix the upstream design problem.

“If the public and the private sector jointly design, and the public sector builds it, I think design is where the biggest challenge is.”

This is the partnership model he is suggesting. Private sector for design expertise. Public sector for construction and execution. The two need to be coordinated upstream rather than handed off as separate workstreams.

This is not a radical proposal. It is the model that has produced functional infrastructure in many other countries. It requires a public sector willing to take design input from outside, and a private sector willing to invest in design contribution without immediate financial return.

What I Took Away

Three things from this segment will stay with me.

The 24 million square feet math. The structural reality that Bangalore is absorbing 200,000 to 300,000 new workers a year is the precondition for any honest conversation about traffic.

The science-versus-construction distinction. Most Indian infrastructure debates are about whether enough is being built. Thirumal’s reframe is that the design of what is being built is the bottleneck, not the volume.

The 70-30 reframe. The behavioural component of the traffic problem is the part nobody wants to name in Indian public discourse, because naming it requires asking citizens to update their own behaviour, which is harder than asking the government to update its infrastructure. Thirumal named it anyway.

You may agree with Thirumal Govindraj. You may push back on the 70-30 split. The structural analysis stands on its own.

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