Bangalore - metro or bust?

Bangalore - a city known for its lush gardens, scenic beauty and great weather all year round. Bangaloreans claim that the city is an Indian metropolis with a modern outlook. It is supposed to be the heart of the booming Indian software and electronics industry.

Sure, the illusion lasts for a week. But let me tell you what Bangalore is really like when the smokescreen clears. For the metropolitan city that it is, embracing people from all over the country, how about having a street sign in English or Hindi, for God’s sake! All road signs are in the local language, Kannada. Even the public transportation has signs in Kannada alone. I thought Chennai was bad when they insisted on putting up anti-Hindi protests everywhere. But at least they compensate for it by writing the bus destinations in English as well as Tamil!

Now to the root cause of the problem, the people of Bangalore. The state has been aptly named "Kar-natak" (make a scene). They have imposed a seven-week moratorium on all non-Kannada movies here, meaning that movies in all other languages will be released only seven weeks after they have released in the rest of the country. This is supposed to uplift the sagging Kannada film industry, since nobody, not even a Kannadiga, watches their lousy movies otherwise. Has anybody heard of anything more preposterous than this? Maybe Thackeray’s plan of driving all non-Maharashtrians out of Mumbai came close. That’s the way to say welcome to all the money-makers in Bangalore, who don’t belong to the state at all, much less speak the language.

How about the booming electronics and software industries here? Well, here’s the truth behind that affair. The incentive they had to set up shop in Bangalore was massive tax benefits. The spawning of these IT Parks and Electronics Cities has resulted in massive traffic problems since the small city is not built to handle such expansive growth in such a short time. It has also led to some of the worst roads possible - remember what Mumbai was like in the monsoon? Since the industries that started the problem barely pay anything as city taxes for improving the infrastructure, the condition just gets worse by the day.

The whole charade is led by a dysfunctional State Government with a Chief Minister who has effectively stopped all the infrastructure work that was in progress before he came to power. He couldn’t even form a cabinet of ministers for a month after he took office! And despite direct orders (requests were ignored a long time ago) from the Prime Minister of India himself, this guy has yet to fill a single pothole in the city’s most congested and despicable road.

Even with the "modern and broad" outlook the Bangaloreans have, companies still prefer to recruit only from local colleges, preferably Kannada speaking populace. During official meetings, they speak almost exclusively in Kannada, so a non-speaker (like me) is absolutely flabbergasted in all weekly meetings and conferences. And to think that the French are snobbish!!

Still, one learns to get around. For all the deriding remarks I made about the people here, I must say this: they are very helpful in every way possible. Some of them even go out of their normal routine to help a stranger out, which is unheard of elsewhere in the country. They are also very conscious of their image and communicate very well beyond the language barriers that exist. Even though Bangalore is a sleepy little town, people sure are active during the hours that the city is awake. Not too many lazing around, it’s a nice thing to see. Take in the good and filter out the bad, that’s what I am here to do. While in Bangalore… "Namma ooru, Bangalooru!"