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Bangalore General Information

The South Indian 5,7 million mega-city of Bangalore, the state capital of Karnataka, and founded in 1537, has had a long history as a centre for textile and silk production. During the 19th century the British established South India´s largest cantonment there. Modern industrialization started during the early 20th century when the princely state of Mysore took pioneering steps to promote industry in the state sector. After independence in 1947 the tradition of public sector involvement has continued. Moreover, J. Nehru, India´s first prime minister (1947-64), sought to turn Bangalore into the country´s 'City of the Future', into India´s intellectual capital. For about four decades, India´s central government invested lavishly in the building of Bangalore´s large-scale knowledge-based public sector research and production facilities as well as the nation´s most sensitive and advanced military and space research facilities. Today the city boasts three universities, about 20 engineering colleges and many research institutes devoted to science, health, aeronautics and space, food and agriculture, and electronics.
During the 1990s Bangalore developed into a preferred location for high technology industries such as electronics, information technology, telecommunications and emerged as a globally integrated centre of high technology research and production. For apologists of the globalization project, the city, labeled with sobriquets like the 'Electronics Capital of India' or 'India´s Silicon Valley', represents one particularly positive showcase for the new opportunities of the Newly Industrializing Countries to profit from recent trends in economic globalization.
Currently more than 700 IT-companies are going about their business there. Among them are almost all the global giants of the e-business-sector which run both wholly-owned or partially-owned subsidiaries and joint ventures with domestic partners. In the meantime some prominent domestic software firms have also been established. The city´s software industry is highly export-oriented and handles a spectrum of services that ranges from fairly low-tech, labour intensive activities like data entry and transcribing work to much higher value-added activities like developing end-user applications and software packages or services. During the 1990s the IT-industry of Bangalore continued to grow at rates that were amazing according to world standard - around 50% annually - and were worth 2,5 billion US-Dollar in 2001/02; that was about one third of India´s total IT-revenue. Out of the total software and service exports, almost two thirds was to the Americas, 26% to Europe, 4% to Japan and 7% to the rest of the world.
Despite the significant downward trends in the world economy since 2001 the software and services industries of Bangalore, currently employing approximately 75,000 people, have proved to be more resilient and continue to record growth rates of almost 20%. It is expected, however, that mergers and acquisitions, rationalization and newly emerging competitors like the cities of Hyderabad and Pune will further reduce the speed of the city´s IT-sector expansion and will in particular reduce low-skilled labour opportunities.

The meteoric rise of Bangalore to a globally integrated location of the IT-industries produces profound changes in the metropolitan landscape creating aggravating disparities and a highly polarized urban society. Bangalore is becoming what is called a multiple fragmented city where both social and geographical barriers are reinforced. While a relatively tiny stratum of an affluent urban elite takes benefit from the recent transformations the living conditions of the urban poor, however, will be further marginalized. The price explosion in the housing sector overburdens the financial capabilities of the lower middle-classes leading to their infiltration into many of the more than 800 slum settlements that already give shelter to about 1.5 million people. Besides that, the public infrastructure is feeling the strain. Its improvement could not keep pace with the tremendous population growth (1.5 million from 1991-2001) and the requirements of the new globalized economic actors. The consequences are frequent power cuts and a looming water shortage with water only available every second day. Moreover the tap water is highly contaminated, despite its chlorination.
The gross deficiencies in infrastructure and public services have already created a sense of disappointment among the IT-sector. Some software companies have relocated some of their business to other locations that offer advantages Bangalore did some years ago.
Frightened that the city will be no longer the saving grace of urban India, Bangalore´s elite have begun to tackle the city´s problems. Recently the chief minister of Karnataka, who also holds the portfolio for urban development, declared his determination to sustain Bangalore´s primacy. Slogans claim that Bangalore will be India´s Singapore and will compete not only with other Indian cities but with the real Silicon Valley in California. The final aim is to make Bangalore globally competitive. Since then the state government response has focussed on instituting dedicated investment for mega-projects, most significantly in infrastructure which forms the basis for these types of projects, for example, the Rs. 1.35 billion 'mega-city project'. This project focusses on modernizing Bangalore by urban renewal and urban design. The funds allocated to the Bangalore Development Authority and the Bangalore City Corporation, are for the completion of the ring road and for fly-overs and truck terminals. Other megaprojects are the construction of an international airport, the provision of fibre-optic services in high-value industrial areas and the development of the Bangalore-Mysore expressway, which involves large-scale land acquisition for four satellite towns. It is obvious that all these investments are exclusively responses to the demands of the modern industrial sector but have little value in the common residents´ daily lives.
Christoph Dittrich
Institute of Cultural Geography
University of Freiburg, Germany


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