New Delhi: Bengaluru has become the first Indian city to broach the idea of a congestion tax as a solution to the traffic crisis—the literal point at which India’s Silicon Valley comes to a standstill. While various suggestions and policy interventions have been floated in the past, Bengaluru, according to TomTom, has the third-worst traffic in the world, and is beaten only by Barranquilla in Colombia and Kolkata, another Indian city.

At a ‘high-level’ meeting, which had Biocon Managing Director Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Chief Secretary Shalini Rajneesh, civic activist RK Misra, as well as undersecretaries, several measures to rid Bengaluru of its urban nightmare were discussed—one of which was a congestion tax. Commuters venturing into the city’s Outer Ring Road, a 60-kilometre stretch that

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