Bangalore blues

Bangalore blues
Sachidananda Murthy
Editor, The Week

Bangalore is always in the news thanks to its entrepreneurs and politicians. The hi-tech city features prominently in the new globalisation theory of American writer Thomas Friedman, whose The Earth Is Flat is on bestseller lists. There are more books in the pipeline on the one time pensioners’ paradise studying the remarkable changeover in the last quarter century.

"India contains many Indias," observed poet A.K. Ramanujan, who spent most of his life in Chicago teaching and analysing Indian culture. Similarly, there is more than one Bangalore. If Friedman looks at Bangalore as the city to which the world is keen to outsource its work thereby shrinking the world to flatness, there is nothing even about the politics of the city’s development. The battle for Bangalore is an intense one and the city’s development projects are pawns in the struggle. It is a struggle of caste, class and personalities.

The most memorable line of H.D. Deve Gowda in Parliament was his description of Congress president Sitaram Kesri as an "old man in a hurry". Kesri had withdrawn support to the United Front government in 1997 ending Gowda’s prime ministership. Eight years later, Gowda is the key man in Bangalore.

Gowda, who rose from the political ashes a year ago is stunning his opponents by the remarkable growth of his Janata Dal (Secular), even in the hypergrowth city of Bangalore. A year earlier, his candidates had bitten the dust in the IT city, but now have wrested an Assembly seat held by former chief minister S.M. Krishna, who lavished attention on Bangalore, but is an arch political enemy of the former prime minister. Gowda’s rally of the slum dwellers and the lower middle class population of Bangalore had indicated his growing clout. The Gowda-Krishna rivalry put the IT industry in a bind, as the industry had rooted for Krishna when he was chief minister and had ignored Gowda.

Infosys has seen visits by presidents and prime ministers of nearly 40 countries. But Gowda has not been there. When Bangalore’s new airport got stalled due to land grab allegations raised by Gowda’s party, Infosys chief Narayana Murthy went to Gowda’s house for a rapprochement, as Murthy was chairman of the project. Gowda grudgingly gave a green signal, after the government agreed not to give away non-essential land.

Gowda says he wants accountability to return to Bangalore as he alleges that only carpetbaggers patronised by the previous Congress government have benefitted by the booming land prices and mega public investment in the ‘air-conditioned city’.

His latest target is the Rs 6,000 crore Bangalore Metro project which he feels is wasteful and will uproot the poor who live in the city’s crowded localities. He has plumped for the monorail as the alternative. Urban planners have warned of a total breakdown of Bangalore if it does not get a mass rapid transport system.

‘Bangalore is a city in search of suburbs’ it was once said, but not anymore. It is now a city of suburbs where residences jostle with glass and steel software development centres. Yet, traffic is chaotic with everything from a 19th century horse drawn jutka to the latest limousine on the narrow streets. Interestingly, several entrepreneurs who want to emulate the success of Murthy, start their business in a car garage, just as the original Infosysian did.

Krishna, who is now Maharashtra governor, is incensed by the "pettiness and jealousy", saying Gowda had ulterior motives in trying to take Bangalore off the development loop. Their followers, too, indulge in sledging, and the battle for Bangalore could be the undoing of the uneasy coalition between Gowda and the Congress Chief Minister Dharam Singh, who is already under fire from Krishna’s supporters for not taming Gowda. The chief minister is doing a balancing act, as he knows Bangalore is a priority city for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who sees it as the best showcase example for Manmohanomics.

Gowda has his share of supporters who want somebody to slow down the commercialisation of the city, which is affecting its laid-back character. There are optimists in the city who feel Bangalore would grown in spite of politics because its dynamism comes not from the state, but from its IT entrepreneurs and the land sharks.