While Bengaluru continues to make headlines for pothole-ridden roads, traffic congestion, and even flooding and water shortages, more than ₹100 crore is being spent on the city every day, yet there is no official record that clearly shows where this money goes.

This mismatch between rising public expenditure and continuous civic problems was the theme for the third edition of “The Bengaluru Debates” held at the Bangalore International Centre in collaboration with Janaagraha, where discussions focused on whether “Radical transparency can transform Bengaluru”.

Janaagraha said they estimated Bengaluru’s public expenditure at ₹38,455 crore for 2021-22, more than ₹100 crore a day. However, these numbers had to be reconstructed by piecing together data from over 70 documents and does not exist in any official document or website, highlighting the absence of agency responsible for tracking total city-level spending.

During the discussion, Abdul Wajid, president of the District Congress Committee (DCC), Bengaluru North, and former councillor; Meera K., co-founder and trustee, Oorvani Foundation; and Padmanabha Reddy, former Leader of the Opposition, BBMP, and former councillor, were present with Janaagraha CEO Srikanth Viswanathan.

Fragmented system

The exercise, as per a report by Janaagraha titled “Public expenditure in Bengaluru” said it exposed how fragmented Bengaluru’s public finance system is. Public money flows through at least three channels- the city government (earlier the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike, now split into five corporations under the Greater Bengaluru Authority), State government departments such as health and education whose budgets do not specify city-level spending, and a wide network of parastatals- government-controlled bodies handling core services like water, power, transport and urban development.

With no consolidated system, even identifying who spends on the city required mapping 29 public authorities, of which only a subset could be analysed due to lack of reliable data, it said.

The estimate of ₹38,455 crore itself, the report highlighted and participants discussed, is conservative. Several departments were excluded because they do not publish Bengaluru-specific data, and in many cases, spending had to be attributed using proxies such as population share, service coverage, or project location. The analysis relied on a mix of budgets, annual reports and audited financial statements, using actual expenditure wherever available, and reconstructing figures where it was not.

Only 20% spending

The data shows that only about 20% of Bengaluru’s public spending is routed through the city government, the only directly elected and accountable body. The remaining nearly 80% is spent by parastatals such as the Bescom, BMRCL, BWSSB, and BMTC. Among these, the Bescom alone accounts for around 47.3% of total spending, followed by metro and water utilities at about 13.4% and 8.80% respectively.

The report reflected that on an average, parastatals disclose just 34% of their financial information. While the BBMP had a relatively higher disclosure level of around 80%, even that leaves significant gaps. Several agencies perform far worse- the BWSSB discloses about 20%, while bodies such as the BMRDA, Karnataka Road Development Corporation Limited (KRDCL) and Bengaluru Smart City Limited disclose as little as 13%. At the extreme end are agencies like Bengaluru Solid Waste Management Limited (BSWML) and Bengaluru Smart Infrastructure Limited (B-SMILE), which have virtually no public disclosure.

The B-SMILE, despite being set up with an outlay of around ₹7,000 crore and receiving allocations exceeding ₹3,200 crore in 2026-27, does not even have a functional website.

Currently, only three of the 12 major parastatals- BDA, BWSSB and BMRDA- are required to publish financial data under their own laws. Others are not obligated to disclose such information because they are “unlisted” entities.

Key reforms

To address these gaps, Janaagraha report proposed three key reforms- bringing all public authorities under a common fiscal transparency framework, creating a unified city-level dashboard that consolidates spending across agencies, and publishing granular, project-level data. It also recommended making data available by sector and ward and ensuring that all information is proactively disclosed in machine-readable formats.