lsd;22451
I will be happy without one more bangalore:confused:
I fully understand your emotions... although I live in Bangalore, my heart is in Mysore.
But I disagree with the logic - few thoughts of mine on the same. Feel free to counter.
What is Bangalore's problem?
Bangalore was attracting companies even when the city was telling them not to come here. Bangalore had the "edge" of starting the IT revolution in India and like Silicon Valley, other companies mushroomed around it. For people like me, who started a company in Bangalore, there was no other city to go to, bcos the skills I wanted to hire were in Bangalore only, not Hyd, not Pune, not Delhi.
So, Bangalore's IT growth "exploded" and infrastructure didn't grow at the same pace, partly due to the delicate political balance of coalition govt.
How is Mysore different?
Mysore has to work very very hard to attract anybody to setup a shop there. It has to compete with Bangalore, Hyd, Pune, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai - all of those who have better international connectivity and broadband infrastructure in addition to skilled talent available which are important for an MNC.
Mysore can offer only talented fresh-grads at this time. So, Mysore's growth will never be as explosive as Bangalore. Besides, Mysore doesn't have the weather of Bangalore either which attracts lots of people from north and Chennai to Bangalore. So, IMO, it will remain a kannadiga majority for some time to come. I'm not saying whether it's a plus or minus. Just stating it.
Hyd inspite of having far better infrastructure than Bangalore is still struggling to take significant business away from Bangalore. Being a STPI unit, I get annual STPI reports and I see the export figures broken down into cities.
Mysore will never become another Bangalore
Since Mysore's IT growth will be slow, the city will always be a step ahead in infrastructure and hence will have the time to plan it. Bangalore didn't have that luxury.
It helps to have more and better jobs in Mysore - trickle down works
Because I see it with my own eyes in Bangalore. My brother who works in a lighting company has seen far more business in past few years than in the 10 years before that. I was surprised when I learnt the charitable contributions in Bangalore are also on record-high. I got this from an NGO I work with. A cousin of mine who works full time as a social worker in Raichur says, they pick where to take the funding from. The wealth creation is having a positive impact on these.
Indeed it is also creating the gap of the rich and the poor and there are social issues because of this. Not denying that. But tell me this, when your kids grow, don't you want them to work, don't you want them to get better jobs? Isn't that development? If you are living in Mysore, would you prefer they work in Mysore or send them to the hell called Bangalore - that's what it will be in few years.
If you are anti-development and want things to remain they were 20 years back, I cannot argue on that.
IT and non-IT can co-exist
Although I live closer to work in Bangalore, my parents live in Vijayanagar. That part of the town is far from most of the IT development. I lived there for couple of years and even now I visit there often. There's a significant difference in lives. To a large extent, that place is still the good old Bangalore we used to have, whereas places like Koramangala and Indiranagar have changed to the extent that even those who lived there few years back will not recognise it now.
...
Mysore has shot in it's own foot by such high RE prices. These high RE prices make business less feasible and that slows down the growth. Whereas, in Bangalore, even today you can find good apartments not too far from your work.
What I believe is that Tier-2/3 towns have to grow to relieve the pressure from cities like Bangalore, Hyd, Chennai, et al. Bangalore grew the way it grew because cities like Mysore, Mangalore and many others across the country didn't. We could have had a decent Bangalore had the growth spread across multiple cities.
US has Silicon valley which comprises of huge area (SF, SJC, Pleasanton, etc). But in addition to that, it also has seattle, portland, LA, austin, dallas, chicago, NJ, RTP, Boston area, etc where there's plenty of IT industries.