Jobs continue to grow in Bangalore

Bustling B'lore buckling with jobs
Cheap-but-skilled manpower in abundance continue to attract companies world over to the 'Garden City', ignoring the infrastructure bottlenecks.
Reuters

BANGALORE: When narrow colonial-era streets get jammed with evening traffic in India's technology capital, the radio disc jockey on car stereos turns agony aunt.

"I want you to vent all your frustrations by screaming as hard as you want to," Darius Sunawala tells a rush-hour commuter moaning by phone about potholed roads in Bangalore.

The break-neck growth in jobs and income in this south Indian boomtown has proved a mixed blessing. Traffic is just one problem linked to its dash to relative prosperity, along with drastic changes to lifestyles for those working interminable night shifts and worries about the moral health of all the well-paid youngsters.

Of course, any indication that Bangalore's growth has limits would be welcomed by many workers in Western countries, particularly the United States, where outsourcing has been a hot issue in the presidential campaign ahead of the November 2nd, election.

But experts say traffic jams will not deter the more than 1,200 companies who have decided to set up shop here, simply because of the huge pool of cheap talent. Plus, telecoms and power facilities matter more to them than roads or culture.

Santosh Martin, associate director at real estate consultants Jones Lang LaSalle, said companies will look to lease 8 million square feet (743,000 sq metres) of new office space in Bangalore this year -- implying roughly 80,000 new jobs -- up from nearly 6 million a year ago.

"This is not supply, but demand," Martin said.

"Clients have always been complaining about infrastructure, but that has not stopped them from coming."

India's huge cheap-but-skilled workforce with fluent English has attracted companies from around the world. They have created around 550,000 jobs in software and 280,000 in back-office work in a $12.5 billion industry growing at 30 percent a year.

No less than a third of those workers are in Bangalore. And as a result of all the growth, plush restaurants have popped up beside the potholed roads and property prices have shot up, especially for trendy condominiums.

Steel-and-glass offices and apartments are mushrooming in shiny new suburbs outside the city of 6.5 million once known as "Pensioner's Paradise".

CLOGGED STREETS

The sound of impatient commuters honking fills the air and once-sleepy streets are now clogged. Fuelled by cheap car loans, Bangalore has added 370,000 vehicles in two years, taking the number to 1.95 million.

A clutch of tech companies have threatened to boycott the annual BangaloreIT.com industry show from November 1st to 5th if the authorities fail to act to tackle traffic jams and potholes.

Officials say they are doing their best, pointing to a 9-km (5.5-mile) elevated expressway announced last month to link central Bangalore with its Electronics City suburb and saying they could take further measures if necessary.

All the new jobs have put more money in the pockets of Bangaloreans, even if they struggle to find the time to enjoy it.

Anil Kumar, a 27-year-old Hindu, and Imelda Fernando, his 26-year-old Christian fiancee, are the faces of a new, cosmopolitan India who make a good living in the middle of the night, serving U.S. customers many time zones away.

Both work for TransWorks, a 2,600-employee call centre firm, where they regularly do 12-hour shifts that end well after dawn.

FIVE-STAR EATERIES

On days off, they eat at five-star hotels, something their parents, modest government workers, could hardly dream of.

"And we take taxis, which our parents never could," Fernando said.

Between them, the couple has had eight promotions in four years and their salaries have grown roughly five-fold.

Imelda started as an agent, but now manages 125 people and earns 33,000 rupees a month. Kumar, an assistant general manager, earns twice that. While their pay is a third or less of what U.S. counterparts earn, it is more than enough in India.

But for couples on the opposite ends of night shifts, being together is tough, Kumar said. "Your life can go for a toss."

And that's not to mention the traffic.

"It takes me 40 minutes to get to work," Fernando said. "Earlier it was 20."

In a country of one billion people, where two-thirds of them depend on agriculture, making big sacrifices for work is common.

Nonetheless, turnover in the outsourcing industry is high, so recruiters flock to find new talent at "job fairs" and managers offer staff loans, discount pizzas and cheap accommodation.

Local newspapers speak of a threat to conservative Indian values as young workers increasingly indulge in casual sex, and the papers suggest that eager human resource managers may be encouraging too much staff bonding in an effort to boost morale.

As for the notion that Bangaloreans are stealing jobs, that rarely enters the debate.

"Most companies are outsourcing growth," said Kumar, who also speaks proudly about how his employees helped a U.S. client keep business going when hurricanes hammered Florida a few weeks ago.