[Urbanstudy] How Bangalore went from cosy town to an urban nightmare, thanks to a gladiatorial IT boom

[Vinay Baindur]

http://www.thenewsminute.com/article/how-bangalore-went-cosy-town-urban-nightmare-thanks-gladiatorial-it-boom-51775
*How Bangalore went from cosy town to an urban nightmare, thanks to a
gladiatorial IT boom*
<http://www.thenewsminute.com/article/how-bangalore-went-cosy-town-urban-nightmare-thanks-gladiatorial-it-boom-51775>
Unlike Silicon Valley, why did modernity and enterprise make Bangalore
unbearable
Saturday, October 22, 2016 - 15:12

*By T.J.S George*

Before anyone knew what was happening, Bangalore became the global leader
in Business Process Outsourcing. The world quickly realized that skilled
staff at salaries of one-quarter to one-tenth of standard rates in the West
was not Bangalore’s principal attraction—wunderkinds abounded in the region
capable of handling any challenge from any quarter. Companies like Intel,
Microsoft and Cisco Systems picked the city for their advanced R&D projects.

An army of whizz-kids soon emerged to turn Bangalore into India’s start-up
capital as well. Bangalore acquired a newly prosperous, even bohemian,
aura. The speed at which information technology altered the sociology as
well as the economy produced an inevitable backlash. While intellectuals
such as U. R. Ananthamurthy cautioned about newly created problems of
identity, local activists questioned what was Bangalore and who was a
Bangalorean. There were campaigns for jobs for Kannadigas. There were
protests against Hindi signboards. The problem was that IT transformed
Bangalore in ways earlier bouts of industrialization and immigration had
not.

The old agreeable Bangalore was now replaced by an aggressive Bangalore
where no one had time for his neighbours. Everyone was chasing success as
measured by a new consumerist value system. A gladiator culture took over
with the spirit of combat as its perennial feature. If the pre-IT
immigrants made an effort to merge into Bangalore, the new combatants were
too disparate to try. They remained Punjabis, Rajasthanis, Gujaratis and
UP-Biharis, Americans, Canadians, Europeans and Latin Americans, Africans,
Middle Easterners, Japanese, Koreans and Thais. What overwhelmed Whitefield
and Sarjapur were only the high points of what plagued Bangalore as a
whole. Cosy Town turned international melting pot, Bangalore’s face turned
ugly.

California’s Bay Area did not lose its charm when Silicon Valley became a
land of miracles. Neither did Boston. Why did modernity and enterprise make
Bangalore unbearable? The answer was that Bangalore’s elected leaders,
administrators and builders disobeyed Kempe Gowda’s mother. When the fabled
founder of Bangalore set out to build his dream capital in the 1530s, his
mother gave him two instructions: ‘Keregalam kattu, marangalam nedu (Build
lakes, plant trees)’.

Gowda made a hundred lakes and lined the pathways with wide, leafy trees.
Politicians and land dealers of modern times were born to different kinds
of mothers. In about three decades they filled up 2,000 hectares of lakes,
and, in the late 2000s alone, felled 50,000 trees. Under their earth movers
and power saws, the urban sprawl expanded until the Bruhat Bengaluru
Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) became the largest municipal corporation in the
country. The population density rose to 12,000 persons per square
kilometre. The Bangalore Development Authority’s Revised Master Plan
estimated that the population count would cross 20 million.

Small wonder then that in Electronic City land prices rose by 300 per cent
in about ten years. According to popular statistics, Bangalore had more
potholes and dangerous medians per kilometre than any other city. Two of
them were patched up by the authorities. In June 2015, artist Baadal
Nanjundaswamy noticed a water-filled pothole, unusually large even by
Bangalore standards, in the crowded Sultanpalya area. He painted its edges
in greens and blues, planted a few blades of grass in strategic spots and
then brought in a life-size rubber crocodile to frolic in the water. A year
earlier Nanjundaswamy was appalled by the sight of a road median the
detached granite blocks of which had become a danger to motorists. He
turned that too into an art installation, the granite blocks shining in
bright colours with flower stalks and green leaves growing out of them.
Locals gathered to admire the street art on both occasions. Municipal
authorities moved in fast, filled the pothole and straightened the median.
Citizens who criticized them for being anti-art were pacified by those who
pointed to the reassuring sense of shame displayed by the authorities.

Through it all Bangalore acquired more than a hundred slums accommodating 2
million people. New-Age gladiators appeared from nowhere and from
everywhere to take care of slum management and allied businesses. In 2014,
Bangalore ranked second in the number of murders (Delhi was first), third
in robberies (after Delhi and Bombay) and third in dacoity cases (after
Pune and Delhi).

In this urban demographic nightmare, it was inevitable that group
rivalries, linguistic antagonisms and cultural confrontations would become
a part of life.  Local voices often  rose against outsiders, especially
outsiders who stood out as outsiders…

… The IT boom and other forces of rapid change had altered Bangalore from
within, as though unseen hands had reconstituted its DNA. It used to be a
city in peace with itself. It was now a bundle of contradictions, a
battleground of competing constituencies, where going forward resembles
going backward. Knocked off balance by the weight of its own growth,
Bangalore was askew. The hand of the potter did shake when the IT chip hit
him.

*Excerpted with the permission of Aleph Book Company from the book Askew: A
Short Biography of Bangalore by T. J. S. George. You can buy the book here.
<https://www.amazon.in/Askew-Biography-Bangalore-T-George-ebook/dp/B01M0BE7DJ>*

*Picture courtesy: *By Utkarsh Jha
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABangalore_Airport.jpg> [CC BY-SA
2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
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