Virtual residents Bangalore’s bane

Virtual residents Bangalore’s bane
The Asian Age

The threatened boycott of the imminent Bangalore IT festival in by a ginger group of leading IT companies has finally brought into sharp focus the decaying infrastructure of this wretchedly governed city. But the focus of these IT companies seems to be skewed only towards congested roads and mismanaged traffic.

This is understandable because this city’s IT leaders live a sheltered existence in their air-conditioned homes, offices, gyms, spas, bars and cars. There is adequate power redundancy in their homes and offices to insulate them from the erratic power cuts that cripple the city almost every day.

They are also immune to water scarcity that holds many less fortunate households to ransom. It is not just the roads of Bangalore that need to be overhauled. Almost everything about the city calls for major overhaul, including the inert city administration, which was incidentally no better during Krishna’s much-hyped dispensation and should not be used as a model by any other city.

But the city’s residents are nowhere as public spirited or vocal as Delhites who came together to roll the proposed power tariff hike back and also made their point about abolition of the monopoly that characterises power distribution in Delhi, which could be a potent trigger for eliminating crony capitalism in the power sector. The trouble with Bangalore is that those who have enriched themselves on the back of the IT revolution lead "virtual" lives.

They travel to overseas destinations three months of the year, take off to "off-site" pleasure locations almost every other weekend when they are in town and generally conduct themselves like ostriches. It would be futile to expect them to rally for consumers’ rights as they are basically "Indian-Born Videshis" who will migrate to wherever wealth can be created without soiling one’s fingers. Meet the new economy mercenaries of the H1B and LIB visa genre.