Operation Hijack Bangalore

There is an unmistakable conspiracy afoot to hijack the Bangalore agenda, and so far the bad guys are winning.

I don't know where to start or how to go about writing on this subject in an organized and structured way. So, I will just jot down a bunch of questions/points and then expand on them one by one. Following are the questions/points which will be covered in this blog post:

1. What is Bangalore or Bengalooru? What is the background?
2. What is the Bangalore agenda?
3. Who are the hijackers and why are they doing it?
4. Hijacking the Infrastructure agenda.
5. Perception of the IT industry by non-IT folks.
6. Bangalore Demographics and Kannadiga angst.
7. Hijacking the Kannadiga agenda.
8. Reservation for Kannadigas in IT industry.
9. The anti-IT paradox.
10. Targetting Infosys.
11. Why should Bangalore be protected as the technology capital?


What is Bangalore or Bengalooru? What is the background?

Bangalore is the capital city of the Karnataka state in southern India. Among all the cities of the world, Bangalore is second only to the United States' Silicon Valley, in terms of popularity for its technical industry. Almost every major tech company of the world (from Google and Yahoo to Microsoft, IBM, Texas Instruments, etc.) and of India (from heavyweights like Infosys and Wipro to very small, hardly heard of companies) have their presence in Bangalore. Bangalore has turned out to be the capital of the world tech-work outsourcing industry, resulting in the addition of a new word into the English language: Bangalored! Playing host to technology companies is not new to Bangalore. For decades, Bangalore has hosted the headquarters of some of India's biggest companies such as HAL, ITI, HMT, BEL, BHEL, BEML, ISRO, etc. The technology industrial base of Bangalore accelerated the ascension of India as a major player in the world's technology market. It has made valuable contributions to the economic growth of Indian. Sometime in the far future, this very industrial base of Bangalore will be recognized in history as the core engine of India's renewed world dominance in the modern times.

Sustaining and growing such a large industrial base is not possible without having good educational institutions. As such, Karnataka state and Bangalore region have one of the highest concentrations of educational institituions in India. It is also not possible to support such a huge industrial presence by the local population alone. Moreover, Bangalore is relatively close to the borders of neighboring states Tamilnadu and Andhra Pradesh. Hence, there is a large presence of non-Kannadigas (non-natives of Karnataka) in Bangalore. It is estimated that over 70% of the city's residents are non-Kannadigas.

Among all the cities of India, Bangalore is the most favorable city for non-local people. A non-Kannadiga can live in Bangalore for decades, without learning the local language and have no difficulties at all. Locals of Karnataka are some of the nicest, accomodating ("adjusting" in local slang) and least parochial people in India.

Bengalooru is the correct pronunciation of the name of the city whose anglicized name is Bangalore.


What is the Bangalore agenda?

It is quite simple really: To provide for the healthy sustenance and improvement of living conditions for all the residents and businesses of the city, particularly the vast and highly successful technology businesses.

The above deceptively simple statement covers everything including cost of living, infrastructure, environment, people-friendly policies & processes (from being able to party late into the night to respecting and supporting the local language and local culture), business-friendly environment, and security (from criminals as well as terrorists).


Who are the hijackers and why are they doing it?

The Number 1 hijackers of the Bangalore agenda are the local politicians. They are doing this for two reasons:

1. Simply because that is what politicians do: try and grab power, and then stay in power by hook or crook. Principles be damned. Welfare of the citizens is flushed down the drain. They have no interest in nor inkling of the long-term strategy for the development of their constituency, city, state and the country's welfare.

2. There is lot of money, power and prestige associated with being in power in Bangalore, as the ruling party of Karnataka state. The many successful companies in Bangalore pay a huge amount of tax to the state's coffers. Any political party at both the state and national levels would like to get their hands on those huge funds.


Hijacking the Infrastructure agenda:

One of the most visible problems in Bangalore today is that of infrastructure. In particular, the road, traffic and drainage situation. Most of Bangalore's roads were never designed nor built for the kind of traffic they are experiencing today. Except for streets used for purely residential access or streets in remote locations, most of Bangalore's roads experience rush hour traffic during all hours of the day (except very late in the night) and on all days of the week. The noise and environmental pollution levels is staggering. The waste of time and fuel, as well as the stress levels due to dealing with such traffic is high. The dangers on the roads are very real (see: Accident Statistics for Workers of Electronics City, Bangalore).

The need of the times is for the road and traffic issue to be high on the city officials' sights. There has to be definitive short-term and long-term plans to deal with the current and future traffic growth. The situation has to be constantly monitored and periodic changes/progress made. If the government agencies are doing these things, the public are not aware of them. What we have seen so far is an Outer Ring Road around Bangalore and a few flyovers, which have definitely helped, despite having some issues of their own. What else is being done? There seems to be a bankruptcy of ideas and a dearth of action. Meanwhile, the traffic in the city is bursting at the borders of the roads.

In this situation, a mass transit system for the city is an emergency necessity. It has to be developed and implemented on a war-footing. Instead, the Bangalore Mass Rapid Transit project is progressing at a snail's pace. As per the out-dated homepage of the project, construction was supposed to start in June-July 2005, two years after the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation submitted the "DPR" (Detailed Project Report?) to the Government of Karnataka. It took all of two years to just get "in-principle" approval from the Planning Commission of India, another approval from the Pre-Project Investment Board and yet another approval from the Karnataka State Cabinet! In May 2005, H. D. Deve Gowda, objected to the project and sought fresh debates about the cost and feasibility of the project, about the choice of a light rail vs an elevated rail system! Over two years since the project's inception, after all the approvals were received, just before construction is supposed to begin, a debate was called for!

As per the current estimate, the project is to be implemented in 5 years from the start of construction. We can safely add a conservative 2 more years to this estimate owing to the pace at which things get done in India. At this rate, the project could be expected to be completed in the year 2012. If Deve Gowda's call for fresh debate had worked, it would have added another year or two to the project. What would be the traffic situation in Bangalore by the year 2014?

I am not an expert on mass transit systems to know if the questions and concerns Deve Gowda raised were valid. However, I do feel that the cost of delays to the project is far higher than any additional cost the city would incur by choosing one system of mass transit over another. I feel that Deve Gowda, who is a coalition partner of the current ruling party in Karnataka, but who frequently acts as if he is in the opposition, was trying to hijack the infrastructure development efforts to gain attention and political mileage.

Even worse than the story of Bangalore's roads and mass transit system is the story of Bangalore International Airport! Check out this page: Bangalore International Airport Watch. See the number of times the start and end dates have been struck and changed. The oldest start date is Oct 2002, the newest July 2005. The oldest end date was in 2003 and the newest one is in 2006. The ex-prime minister, Mr A B Vajpayee, performed the ground-breaking ceremony in Jan 2002. This ceremony is supposed to be the traditional starting of construction, but the construction has not started until three years later in 2005! A difference of 3 years. Three years may not seem to be a lot, but when you consider that the project was conceived in 1991, you get an idea of how long the project has been delayed before it could merely start!

During all that time, there were endless delays, along with the entry and exit of many a player and partner, because of political games. Many governments have come and gone, ministries have risen and fallen, chief ministers and prime ministers have appeared and disappeared. None of them could expedite the project and give Bangalore a good airport it deserved. Meanwhile, the airport project continues to be used for scoring political points as shown by the recent fall-out between Narayana Murthy and Deve Gowda. In my opinion, even if Narayana Murthy decided to quit when Deve Gowda accused him of not achieving much as the Chairman of the Bangalore International Airport Limited, he should have at least given a proper response highlighting his achievements. His exit, not fully explained, only darkens the issue, rather than shed any light.

Even the location of the airport well beyond the northern border of Bangalore is suspect. Most of Bangalore's technology companies, which form one of the biggest clientele of air travel to and from Bangalore are concentrated in the southern part of Bangalore. It would have made sense to build the airport closer to this region. Building it in some place along the Mysore road, would have not only been closer to the tech companies of Bangalore, it would have helped the development of the Bangalore-Mysore corridor as well. Instead, the airport is coming up in a place which requires travellers from southern Bangalore to travel all the way across or around the city, and then travel some more distance before reaching the airport. This will also have an adverse impact on the traffic situation in the city. I have read reports which alleged that the airport is being constructed to the North of Bangalore because vested interests (including Deve Gowda and his family) own large tracts of land in that area, and they wanted to increase the value of their land holdings.

With real initiative, the Bangalore International airport project would have been completed a long time ago. Not only that, with true vision, the airport would have been conceived as a major hub to the Indian subcontinental region, rather than being designed as just another Indian destination. Imagine how much more profitable the airport and the supporting businesses would have been if it could have been built as a hub where international flights and passengers could lay over enroute to the East and the West! That is the vision which should have driven the Bangalore International Airport project. Instead, the project seems to be driven and delayed in turns by the selfish interests and petty politics.

The Bangalore mass transit system, the Bangalore airport and other infrastructure initiatives in Bangalore are not coming up due to political initiative. They are coming up despite political obstacles and hijacking. Each of them has a long and labored birth, and by the time they become operational, the needs of the city would have grown well beyond the levels that these projects were supposed to address.


Bangalore Demographics and Kannadiga angst:

As I had mentioned above when describing Bangalore's background, a large part of the city's population consists of non-Kannadiga immigrants from other states. Even among people born and brought up in Bangalore, many people are from a non-Kannadiga background. This has been the case in Bangalore for a long time.

In any part of the world, when the percentage of immigrant population rises, there is bound to be some discontent among the local people. The immigrant populations take up the available land and resources, they drive up the cost of living and essential commodities, they bring in their own culture and languages which may result in the erosion of the local language and culture. In a city like Bangalore where the immigrant population reaches 70% or more, these things happen on a much higher scale.

The immigrants have not been very sensitive to Bangalore, its local people and their culture either. At best, they show apathy, disinterest and indifference to the Kannada language and Kannada culture. At worst, they behave in a way which hurts the local sentiments. The businesses which serve the residents of Bangalore gear their products and marketing towards the predominantly non-Kannada people. Often, they totally ignore the Kannada people. It is easy to perceive this as an in-your-face disrespect and insult towards Kannada language. Some very recent examples of such behavior include:

1. Sales and marketing people who cannot or will not speak Kannada in many of Bangalore's big retail businesses.
2. Lack of Kannada language programming on Radio City, Bangalore's popular FM channel.
3. Citibank's refusal to accept a document from a Bangalore-based customer (myself), because it was attested in Kannada. I will blog about this in a separate post.
4. Negative feedback and opinion expressed by a lot of non-Kannada residents of Bangalore to the issue of correcting the name of the city to Bengaluru or Bengalooru.

Understandably, such factors create dissatisfaction and distress among the locals of Bangalore and the Kannada populace of the rest of Karnataka. They are witnessing their own language and culture facing erosion in their own state capital. They cannot be expected to sit quiet.

It is worth noting here that a similar erosion of Marathi language and culture in Mumbai led to the formation of the very parochial Shiv Sena party, which has harassed non-Marathi people over certain issues, which has tried to use force in imposing Marathi language and culture in Mumbai, and which has tried to prevent non-Marathi people from filling certain employment openings in Mumbai.


Hijacking the Kannadiga agenda:

The dissatisfaction and angst of the Kannadigas is hijacked and subverted by certain politicians towards their own political ends and to settle petty scores. This is so obvious that I am surprised the Kannadigas don't see it themselves. Ideally, the primary agenda of a Kannadiga movement would be to protect and enrich the Kannada language and culture. Sadly, this agenda is hijacked my short-sighted people, achieving little or no constructive purpose for Kannada language and culture. Such hijackings only result in destruction and bad name to the Kannadiga movement. Examples of such actions:

1. Violence against Tamil and other immigrants during the Kaveri water dispute between Karnataka and Tamilnadu. The violence did not contribute to any resolution of the dispute. It badly affected many lives, brought a bad name to Bangalore and the Kannadiga movement.

2. Violence and unrest in the Bangalore city when anything happens to the popular movie actor Dr Rajkumar. Whether Dr Raj was kidnapped by a forest brigand or even when he falls ill at times, violence erupts in the city as if such violence would protect or serve Dr Raj's interests. Such violence only results in loss of public life and property.

3. The recent protest in front of Infosys office in Electronics City, Bangalore. The activists demanded priority and reservation for Kannadigas in filling job openings. This was once again an unproductive and misguided move. More about this in a subsequent section below.

It is unfortunate that under the instigation of certain short-sighted politicians with vested interests, the Kannadiga movement in Bangalore today has an element of anti-IT industry stance in general and an anti-Infosys attitude in particular. This is a pure and simple hijacking of the Kannadiga agenda.


Perception of IT industry by non-IT folks:

Today, Bangalore has become synonymous with India's IT industry. Any discussion of Bangalore's issues should include a discussion of its IT industry.

The IT industry in Bangalore and the rest of India came in quietly, under the radar. At first, the public and the central or state governments hardly noticed them. Why would they? Most IT shops were small. They did not occupy large spaces nor did they employ too many people. They did not bring in any large machinery, nor did they ship out any visible voluminous products in trucks. However, the IT companies could not be hidden for long. They were booking extraordinary profits (compared to other industries), earning in foreign currency, growing rapidly with buildings appearing all over the city like mushrooms on wet ground, and they were starting to employ more and more people! Before anybody could blink 10 times, the IT industry shed its new bride's veil and captured the attention of the whole nation like an extremely bright and beautiful new daughter-in-law captures the attention of the whole family. The IT industry in India could grow the way it did not because of government support, but rather because of the absence of government interference. In the beginning, the IT companies needed practically nothing from the government. The government hardly took notice of their existence. The industry grew free and happy. Due to its extraordinary success, predominantly by and for the middle-class people, the IT industry was the darling and pride of everyone in Bangalore.

However, the rapid growth of Bangalore's technology businesses, has resulted in an even more rapid growth of Bangalore's population and the accompanying problems. Cost of living in Bangalore is one of the highest in the country. The real estate market is skyrocketing. The traffic is bursting at the seams. What used to be the Garden City has now become a highly polluted city. The local people feel that the high-growth technology industry of Bangalore has contributed to these not so nice changes. In a leap of logic which is incomplete, inaccurate and fuelled by mischievous vested interests, the non-IT people of Bangalore have started to blame the technology companies as the root cause of Bangalore's woes. These companies are viewed as being apathetic to local people and their conditions, driven by a pure profit-motive. They are thought to have arm-twisted the government into giving them too many facilities and breaks at the cost of the development of the rest of Bangalore city and Karnataka state.

Read the following translations of Ravi Belagere's articles to get a glimpse of the thoughts and attitudes of the non-IT people in Bangalore towards its IT companies:

1. An Open Letter to Sudha Murthy
2. Nobody here is bitten by a (mad) dog to raze the city and rebuild it!


Reservation for Kannadigas in the IT industry:

Background info 1.: Dr Sarojini Mahishi Report and related info.
Background info 2.: FAQ on Discrimination of Kannadigas in IT industry.

I am in no position to comment on the general accuracy of what is presented in the FAQ above regarding the discrimination against Kannadigas in the IT industry. What I can say based on my 8 years in the industry, working for a Bangalore-based IT company is that, I have personally seen no region-based or language-based discriminations in the groups that I have been involved with. There are a couple of points though:

1. During the early part of my career, in the late 90's, I noticed that almost all the desktop and network support engineers working in my company were from Kerala. I don't know if this was because my company had hired a Kerala-based contractor to provide desktop and network support, or if the person recruiting for that group favored people from Kerala. This started to change during the early part of 2000s, and people from other regions started to appear in this group.

2. I have also heard from one friend that in the department he worked for, in this same company, there was preferential treatment given by the managers to "people whose names ended with -an" (tamilians).

My experience with human nature in general and with Indians in particular suggests that there is indeed some truth to region-based and language-based favoritism from managers and recruiting personnel. To what extent this is true, I cannot say.

Suppose we accept as truth that there is indeed a preferential treatment given to people from certain regions. The solution to that problem is not to shift the preferential treatment to people from another region. The solution is to remove any preferential treatment at all, and let people compete purely based on their merits. This is the proper way of doing things. Giving priority or reservation to any particular group of people would be counter-productive. It does nothing but replace one problem with many more.

Consider the following three main scenarios in which a company recruits most of its employees:

1. Specific requirement: When an IT company needs a person with a particular skill-set and experience to fill a specific project requirement, it cannot and will not wait to discriminate based on the person's caste, gender, region or language. There is a dearth of good people in the industry and no company can afford to get bogged down by such petty considerations. Doing so would be detrimental to the company's competitiveness and ability to deliver on the project.

2. Campus recruitment: I have spent the first quarter century of my life in Bangalore. I have spent the first half of my career in Bangalore. During all that time, I have personally come across no instances of a good college or a good student left out from campus recruitments by good companies. There are far too many companies in Bangalore and they are all looking for good people. It is natural that they would look for good people across the country. Karnataka does not have enough good colleges or good students to satisfy the recruitment needs of all these companies. If the companies had to comply with any reservation rules for Kannadigas or local people in any part of the country, they might end up having to fill the numbers with less-than-good candidates and this is not good for the entire industry as a whole.

3. General recruitment of experienced candidates: Occasionally, companies have general recruitment drives for experienced candidates. A combination of factors from points 1 and 2 above apply in this case also. Companies cannot make it a practice of preferring candidates from particular region or language without suffering serious adverse effect on their competitiveness and morale.

It may be true that the majority of the people employed in the IT industry of Bangalore are non-Kannadigas. However, I don't think it is true that deserving Kannadigas are not being employed. I am sure that every deserving Kannadiga gets an IT or ITES (IT-enabled Services) job in Bangalore sooner or later. S/he need not even travel to other states, unless s/he wants to.

If companies in Bangalore are forced to comply with any reservation policies to recruit only locals of Karnataka, they would have no choice but to move to more liberal and favorable places. Bangalore and Karnataka would lose out when that happens. This is not a threat or a blackmail. This is a case of simple economics. And please don't tell me that it is a good thing if IT companies move out of Bangalore. More about this later.

Coming back to the topic on hand: Just as it is not possible for companies to implement and follow a practice of giving priority to Kannadigas to fill vacancies, it is not possible for them to give preference to candidates from any other regions as a matter of general policy or practice. Read that again carefully. To repeat, it is not possible for companies to give preferential treatment to any other regional group (North Indians or Tamilians) for the same reasons mentioned above. So, if they are getting such partial treatment, it is only happening in occasional instances by specific managers or HR personnel, and not in general. That is definitely quite bad, but it is not as bad as Kannadigas in general being discriminated against.

What companies can and should do, is to put specific checks and balances in place to ensure that no such region- or language- or caste- based preferential treatment is given to anyone. There must be strict audits and severe penalties for individuals and companies who violate this rule. There must be internal and external boards to handle individual complaints when such practices happen.

The government can certainly pass such a law based on equality. But can a government that is run by political parties, which come to power playing caste-, region- and language-based politics have the guts and will to implement such laws? I doubt it. Once again, this is the case of the country's progressive practices being hijacked by political forces.


The anti-IT paradox:

The anti-IT stance of the non-IT Kannadigas in Bangalore is a fascinating study in the paradox of the average Indian's attitudes and opinions under the influence of politicians and vested interests. A similar paradox is played out in most other issues in India, when politicians hijack the agenda for their own narrow gains. Consider the following:

1. The non-IT Kannadigas in Bangalore are distressed by the deteriorating living conditions in Bangalore. The IT leaders in the city are also dissatisfied by the very same conditions. Yet, when an IT leader like Naranayana Murthy of Infosys gives out a statement criticizing the conditions in Bangalore, the non-IT Kannadigas get angry and worked up. It is hard for me to understand why they should get angry when Mr Murthy criticizes the very same things they don't like. If Mr Murthy's statements force the government to take notice and provide better infrastructure, the non-IT Kannadigas would benefit from it just as Mr Murthy and his organization would. Incidentally, around 7-8 years ago, the current Hosur Road was in a very bad condition. The road was improved by the government only after Mr Murthy's colleagues from Infosys and other IT companies staged a symbolic protest on Hosur Road with road repair tools, claiming to repair the road on their own. Now, everybody in the region enjoys the benefit of an improved road. Not just the IT industry.(It is a different matter that even this much improvement is not enough for that accident-ridden road).

2. The non-IT Kannadigas have been told that the IT industries have arm-twisted and blackmailed ("Give us this, or we will move our companies elsewhere!") successive Karnataka governments into providing special facilities to them. The reality is that, the government has not provided any special or extra facilities to the IT companies. What little has been done for the IT companies covers the bare necessities for any business to function. Especially when compared to what governments in other countries provide to all citizens, and when compared to what governments in other states are willing to provide.

3. The non-IT Kannadigas have also been told that providing facilities to the IT industry has drawn the government's attention and resources away from the rest of Bangalore and Karnataka. The implication here is that, if the IT companies had not forced the government, it would have diverted its attention and resources towards the improvement of the rest of Bangalore and Karnataka. Anybody who has grown up in India and believes this implication is extremely naive, if not downright stupid! Everybody in India knows how lazy and bigoted the political class is. If they could have their way, the politicians would all go to their legislative offices and chambers, take a restful nap and go back to their homes. Whatever little developmental efforts they directed towards the IT companies and their neighborhoods came after a lot of demanding and cajoling, pushing and pulling. Will any intelligent Indian truly believe that if the IT companies had not been provided anything, the government would have used those resources for the development of the rest of the city or state? No! A resounding N-O! The politicians would have just wasted away part of the money and pocketed the rest!

Points 2. and 3. above describe not-so-clever excuses provided by the politicians for not working to develop their constituencies. It is unfortunate that the Kannadigas have accepted such excuses and allowed themselves to be fooled.

4. The IT companies are accused by the non-IT people of not doing enough for the society. They are becoming the favorite whipping boys when any lack is perceived anywhere. Is there a lack of sufficient relief efforts when a natural disaster strikes? Blame the IT companies for not caring enough to share some of their hard-earned wealth! Is the infrastructure situation in Bangalore deteriorating on a daily basis? Blame the IT companies for not doing enough to improve the infrastructure situation. Does Narayana Murthy say that 75 percent of the fresh engineering graduates in the country do not have employment-worthy skills? Blame the IT industries for not improving the academic quality in India!

What the non-IT people should realize is this:
(i) It is not the core business of the IT companies to provide disaster relief, improve infrastructure, improve the quality of academic education in India. Certainly they can help and contribute towards these efforts. However, these are the core businesses and responsibilities of other organizations and agencies. There are other people who should take the responsibility for these and they can approach the IT industries for help and partnership. The IT companies will not deny the right approach. Is it fair to blame the IT industries for not doing something which is not their core business? Is it fair to let go of other people - like politicians and the government - whose core business it is to work towards the development?
(ii) The IT industry in India and in Bangalore is relatively new. Most of the achievements by the older companies have happened just in the past 10-15 years. Is it fair to expect them to not only earn good profits, pay their employees well and improve the general economy of the country in that short period of time, but also to directly work for the improvement of the living conditions of the city? If the IT companies are expected to do this, then what are the governments for?
(iii) Big companies like Infosys and Wipro have very well-organized and formal systems and processes to work for social causes.

Once again, I suspect that it is the work of the politicians and vested interests in shifting the blame to the IT industries for things they have failed to achieve. As it happens so often in India, people are gullible enough to believe the politicians and blame the IT industries.

5. The non-IT Kannadigas say that the IT industries have brought too many people from outside the state to Bangalore and this has led to all the woes of the locals: skyrocketing cost of living, crumbling infrastructure, heavy traffic and pollution. While it is true that the rapidly growing IT industry in Bangalore facilitated these changes for the worse, the industry is not the root cause of all these problems. This is something incidental which has happened in the past in other boom towns and will happen in the future also, anywhere in the world. Take the example of Silicon Valley of the USA to which Bangalore is often compared. Just like Bangalore, Silicon Valley had and has a large immigrant population. Just like Bangalore, the cost of the living has gone up there, and the local culture and living conditions have been affected. Whether the effect of such a growth is positive or negative on the city depends to a large extent on how the city administration handles the growth, in partnership with the businesses. In the best of circumstances, in the slowest of growth periods, Indian administrations cannot cope. It is not surprising that they have not been able to keep up with the pace of Bangalore's growth. Hijacking the infrastructure improvement efforts, as I described earlier, only contributes to this deterioration. The non-IT people should think a little more and view the problems with a broader vision. Then they would realize that they cannot blame the rapid growth of the IT industry alone. They would realize that the greater accountability lies with the city and state administrations.

6. The non-IT people view the IT industries as an exclusive and elite layer of the society which takes all the good stuff from the society, without giving anything back. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The truth is that the IT industry and its people are intricately woven into the fabric of the society. They are not working and living in a vacuum. The money that the IT industry pumps into the city's economy has created many times more jobs than the number of direct IT jobs. I would not be surprised if for every IT employee in Bangalore, there are at least 2 non-IT jobs created. Of these 2 non-IT jobs, at least one to one-and-half jobs would be within the Bangalore city itself. The other half to one job may be in the rest of the country. Even if the IT industry did not participate in any of the social welfare and improvement activities, just this single fact of pumping money into the economy and creating more jobs is a commendable achievement.

7. The non-IT people think that if the IT companies threaten to leave Bangalore and setup shop elsewhere because of the bad infrastructure situation in the city, it is quite alright. They think that the people of the city will not starve if the IT companies leave. Well, there is some truth in it. But it is also true that the millions of jobs which support the IT companies will go out of Bangalore. The general economic well-being of the region will come down. When that happens, Bangalore will not go back to being the peaceful and clean Garden City it once was. Human history shows us that when cities decline, they don't go back to being the peaceful self-sustained villages they once were. Instead, they decline into an uninhabitable and ugly wasteland of crime, poverty and disease. I am sure neither the non-IT people nor the IT folks nor any other well-wishers of Bangalore would like that happening to the city.

8. The non-IT people also think that the IT companies won't leave Bangalore all that easily because they would face similar problems in other cities and states; Bangalore, despite its infrastructure issues, is still a better place than most other states in India. This may also be true. But it is not just other cities and states in India which are vying for a piece of Bangalore's IT action and business. Other countries in Asia and elsewhere are also vying for pieces of the same pie. And they may have a stronger will and better sense to provide the kind of atmosphere which would facilitate the happy co-existence of the technology companies with the local population.

Everyone of the 8 points I have written above regarding the anti-IT stance of the non-IT people in Bangalore represents a paradoxical opinion and attitude of the Indian public. They seem to be opposing the very things which would bring them more benefits, with which they should be partnering. The people are sentimental and their sentiments are so easily hijacked by the unscrupulous politicians. Their emotions and energy are used by the politicians to shirk responsibility and accountability, to shift the blame onto others, and to achieve their own selfish ends. The public are by turns naive and unaware as well as willing and active participants in this hijacking.


Targetting Infosys:

In this hijacking saga of Bangalore, Infosys, one of the foremost IT companies of Bangalore and India, has been a special target of the non-IT Kannadigas. Infosys as an organization and Narayana Murthy, one of the founders of Infosys and its chief mentor, as an individual, have come under a lot of criticism. Such criticism is often short-sighted, shooting off the mouth type of statements which reveal a basic lack of understanding of the issues. It is hard to believe that just a short two to three years ago, almost everyone in Bangalore spoke of Infosys and Naranayana Murthy with pride. There are several reasons for targetting Infosys and Narayana Murthy. Following, I believe are the main reasons:

1. From the beginning, Infosys and Narayana Murthy have both been media-savvy. They have never been shy of the media, and in fact, have actively cultivated the media. In the old days, the technology reporting by the Bangalore edition of the Times of India was little more than organizational announcements composed in the offices of Infosys. As such Infosys has a high visibility in Bangalore as well as in India among all the IT companies. Especially for the non-IT people of Bangalore, Infosys is the face of the IT industry. So, it naturally becomes the target of their anti-IT sentiments.

2. Being the poster-child of India's and Bangalore's IT industry, Infosys and Narayana Murthy are looked upto by a lot of people in the country. Their words hold a lot of weight and influence. Especially when compared to the words of mere politicians. As such, when Narayana Murthy talks about the conditions of Bangalore, of India, about the performance of the governments and politicians, he gets a lot of bandwidth in the media, and the public attention that goes with it. Naturally, the politicians hate this. They cannot respond to Narayana Murthy's criticisms by solid performance because such honest and effective responses are beyond their meagre imaginations and corrupt capabilities. So, the only easy short-cut they have is to discredit Infosys and Narayana Murthy in the eyes of the public. They are trying every trick at their disposal to achieve this. So far, they have been successful in taking along the non-IT Kannadigas on this anti-Infosys and anti-Narayana Murthy ride. Fortunately, the rest of the populace is not affected by this... yet.

3. There is a more sinister reason for targetting Infosys and that is purely political. Infosys has not only been media-savvy, they have also actively engaged the government, especially the Government of Karnataka state. The state government partnership with Bangalore's IT industry in general and Infosys in particular was at its closest during the tenure of ex-chief minister of Karnanataka, Mr S M Krishna. During that time, the Bangalore Agenda Task Force was formed as a partnership between the government and the private industries to improve the governance of Bangalore. The task force was actively led and driven by the senior management of Infosys. Although the current ruling coalition government of Karnataka is led by the Congress party to which S M Krishna belonged, the ruling ministers, including the current chief minister of Karnataka, are not exactly his friends. Moreover, Deve Gowda and his party, who are the main coalition partners in the current government are quite opposed to S M Krishna and they consider him as their main rival. In a bizarre attitude of my enemy's friend is my enemy, Deve Gowda and his ilk consider Infosys and its managers to be their rivals since they were/are friendly with S M Krishna. In fact, some people believe that Deve Gowda's group is apprehensive about Infosys trying to engineer a come back of S M Krishna to power in Karnataka. Hence, they are trying their best to create trouble for Infosys and its management, particularly, Narayana Murthy.


Why should Bangalore be protected as the technology capital?

Why should Bangalore be protected as the technology capital of India? Why should any one city gain such a title and associated importance? Wouldn't it be better for the technology companies to be spread out all over the country so that it is beneficial to the local populations as well as to the companies themselves?

These are good questions to ask. There is an element of truth to them. Many companies are indeed located in other places across the length and breadth of India, and this will continue into the future, provided India continues to be an attractive destination for the technology businesses. The pie of IT businesses is too large to fit in any one city, be it the silicon Valley of the US or Bangalore of India.

However, when certain types of people or organizations come together in a particular place, sometimes they create a certain magnetic energy, a unique synergy, which attracts more and more similar people or organizations to the same place. Such a core group becomes the engine of accelerated growth. The resulting progress is far greater than it would have been if the people and organizations were spread out and did not come together in one place. This is a phenomenon that is observed in all fields, all over the world, including in the field of art, literature, academy, manufacturing, etc.

This is exactly how Bangalore became the technology capital of India, and accelerated the growth of India's technology industry. An industrial base was kick-started in Bangalore by the Indian government decades ago. More and more people have built on that base and the existing human capital of the region, and this has resulted in Bangalore becoming the technology powerhouse it is today. And the good fortune of Bangalore is spreading to other parts of the country. How many companies - foreign and Indian - initially setup shop in Bangalore, and then branched out to other parts of India? How many companies came to India lured by Bangalore, and then setup shop in other places of India? I don't know the exact numbers, but there must be hundreds of them. It is precisely in this way that Bangalore has helped spread the IT business to the rest of the country.

If there had been no Bangalore as we know it, perhaps the growth of the technology business in India might not have been quite so fast. I am not saying there would have been no growth. There would certainly have been growth. Only, we might not have experienced this kind of momentum and acceleration. In the fast-changing technology business, momentum and acceleration is extremely important. Losing momentum can and does often lead to total failure. Precisely for this reason, it is very important for both the Karnataka state and India as a whole to protect and preserve Bangalore's position as the technology capital of India by helping develop a conducive atmosphere there. Conducive to the people and businesses.. If Bangalore loses, the whole country loses. It is as simple as that.

Conclusion:

Bangalore is like an aircraft which is being hijacked by the terrorists who are disguised as the pilots. These pilots are the politicians who should ideally be flying the aircraft to safe heights of success. The residents of Bangalore - both the local people and the immigrants, and the industries of Bangalore are the passengers on the aircraft. The leaders of Bangalore's industries are like the stewards and navigators on the aircraft. The pilots are doing a bad job of flying the aircraft, they are leading it through turbulent zones and causing distress to all. Yet, they have cleverly manipulated a section of the passengers, the non-IT folks, into thinking that the stewards and the navigators are causing all the problems. These non-IT folks are directing their ire at the stewards and navigators, who only want to help the passengers. When this plane crashes, the hijacking pilots, the terrorist politicians, will easily escape with their safety gadgets and parachutes. The rest of us will suffer. The need of the hour is for all the stakeholders to participate in the development efforts as responsible partners, instead of targetting each other, playing the blame game and contributing to the general deterioration.

But then the story of this hijack is not unique to Bangalore. This has been played out in other parts of India, with other issues. Will Bangalore and its people be able to shake off the same old Indian instincts and responses and rise above? It is all upto each one of us.