Tractor The Saviour In Tech Town: In Bengaluru Floods, Farm Machine Takes On Many Roles

From delivering engineers to their offices in glitzy glass buildings, to rescuing elderly residents of upscale societies, to pulling out cars that cost crores, the humble tractor — otherwise a misfit in a tech-driven city — has emerged as quite the hero in Bengaluru's massive flooding. 

The starkness was most evident in a video that showed distraught residents being taken out of the uber-expensive housing complex, Divyasree 77 East in Yemlur, as they passed by Bentleys and Lexuses and BMWs, half-submerged, likely to end up distress sales once the water recedes.

Among those on the trolley was an old man on a wheelchair and a girl looking around in disbelief.
Houses in this society cost Rs 7-10 crore, while the cars included some priced at over Rs 2 crore. 

Honda Civics and VW Polos were the relatively less expensive cars on the damage list. There's no overall estimate yet.

Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, while promising this won't happen again, has blamed previous governments for the tragedy unfolding for three days and counting in Karnataka's capital city. 

Since Bengaluru is known as the IT and startup capital of India, it was no surprise that some honchos of that world, too, ended up on rescue trolleys.

From Divyasree 77 East, the housing complex where swanky cars were submerged, investors Sudhir Sethi and wife Shalini Sethi were taken out too. "There was an elderly person with us who's had a hip replacement recently, and had to be brought down from the second floor. The lifts are not working," Shalini Sethi told NDTV.

Another viral video had ed-tech giant Unacademy's CEO Gaurav Munjal's family and pet dog on a tractor-trolley. He shared it himself, with a note on Twitter: "Family and my pet Albus [have] been evacuated on a tractor from our society that's now submerged. Things are bad." He asked people to message him if they needed help: "I'll try my best."

Besides tractors, earth-moving machines — usually called by brand name 'JCB' — and rafts were deployed too.

The flooding has put the spotlight on unplanned urbanisation. The civic body has identified encroachment on 500 storm-water drains that have now left the city choking.