Introduction

He brings together about 50 farmers at a time. Then, he will work with a developer to build houses and negotiate with buyers for a good price. Within each new layout or set of apartments, two units are typically reserved for the farmer whose land it's built upon. That way, farmers can rent out one unit to use as a revenue stream. Or, the farmer can take their money and buy more land further away.
"It is always better for them to sell the land and then go further away from the [city limits]," Sanjeev says. "After they sell it to the builders, I would buy land further away and continue the agriculture profession."
Muniraju Venkataswamy worked with a broker like Sanjeev to sell his plot in Ramagondanahalli five years ago. His family had been farming his land for three generations. But the apartments being built in Ramagondanahalli draw more groundwater for utility purposes, which depleted the well around his farm. He now has to rely on polluted lake water. He's continuing to farm until the developer breaks ground on his farm.
Image copyright Prabhu Mallikarjunan Image caption Venkataswamy and wife Meenakshi sold their farm in Ramagondanahalli
Venkataswamy got 5 million rupees ($77,000; £63,000) for his one-tenth of an acre plot. With that money, he built a three-story apartment building in Ramagondanahalli. His family lives on the ground floor and he rents out the upper two storeys, which brings him 15,000 rupees per month ($230; £185).
He also had money left over to purchase a bigger piece of land 30km (19 miles) away from the city to continue farming.
"My future generation will need land for farming. If I stay here it won't be enough. So we bought a bigger portion of land by selling here," Venkataswamy says.
Bangalore used to be known for its image as a lush garden city with a foot firmly in the 21st Century.
The municipal corporation acknowledges it has failed to provide the infrastructure the booming city needs.
"As a civic body, we could not match the speed at which the city was growing. We accept that we had failed to provide basic amenities," says MB Thippanna, additional director of town planning.
But he says the authorities have now woken up to take corrective action.
"We have made it compulsory for all apartments with 20 or more units to have sewage treatment plants," Mr Thippanna says. "Also, all stakeholders have come forward to prepare a master plan for the city keeping in the mind the city's expected growth over the next decade."
But as the city continues to expand, the future for traditional farmers who are being squeezed out is still uncertain. Unlike Venkataswamy, Hanumanthappa is not selling. He's dedicated to farming, and that's important for the city because the urban poor need locally-sourced food.
As local farmers who supply Bangalore with produce leave farming, the city will have to source its food from further away. Affluent residents can afford such higher priced foods at supermarkets, but KC Raghu, a nutritionist, says cheaper, locally-grown produce provided to markets and street vendors is what the urban poor rely on.
"We're talking about 20% of Indians earning less than $2 a day," he says. "They can't go to a supermarket and swipe their credit card, that's unthinkable in India right now."

This open shed provides a small storage space for Hanumanthappa

Taking a break from his field work in Ramagondanahalli, Hanumanthappa goes to rest under the ramshackle stone shed at the edge of his farm and smoke a beedi (a traditional hand-rolled Indian cigarette).
Recounting his ordeal, he says the half an acre of land that he's farming on costs 40,000 rupees ($600; £490) a year to rent and fetches him a meagre 100,000 rupees ($1,500; £1,230) of income for the whole year. That money supports his entire family.
Unlike some of his neighbours, he does not wish to move away. He knows no other job than farming. Helpless, he watches his neighbours who have quit farming extract groundwater from those plots, selling it to nearby apartments to make a living.
Image copyright Prabhu Mallikarjunan Image caption These lorries are drawing borewell water from farms to be sold to nearby apartments
Hanumanthappa could have earned three times what he does now by cultivating crops like carrot and cauliflower, had the lake been clean. But he sees no future in this as its polluted water has ruined his earning potential.
"If the owner of this farmland chooses to sell the property and ask me to go, I have to leave," Hanumanthappa says.
"I know nothing else and I have nowhere to go."
Written, filmed and edited by Megan Devlin, Rohit Joseph, Prabhu Mallikarjunan, Romita Majumdar and Tara Sutton. UBC faculty editors for this part of the Surviving the City project were Peter Klein, Kathryn Gretsinger and Dan McKinney.