Traffic, water shortages, now floods: Is Bengaluru dying a slow death?

Concrete replaced green spaces and construction around the edge of lakes blocked off connecting canals, limiting the city's capacity to absorb and siphon off water

Harish Pullanoor spent his weekends in the late 1980s tramping around the marshes and ponds of Yemalur, an area then on the eastern edge of the Indian metropolis of Bengaluru, where his cousins would join him catching small freshwater fish.

In the 1990s, Bengaluru, once a genteel city of gardens, lakes and a cool climate, rapidly became India's answer to Silicon Valley, attracting millions of workers and the regional headquarters of some of the world's biggest IT companies.

The untrammelled expansion came at a price.

Concrete replaced green spaces and construction around the edge of lakes blocked off connecting canals, limiting the city's