Bangalore vs Bangalore

Bangalore vs Bangalore
Gowda and Murthy, or a clash between paradigms
The Times of India

The recent controversies over Bangalore reveal that it is not yet a truly globalised city. The debates between the technocrats and the politicians show that Brand Bangalore still needs to understand the nature of democracy. At first sight, one greets the complaints of IT bosses with empathy. When N R Narayana Murthy resigns from the Bangalore Airport Authority, one easily recognises a Boy Scout integrity in him.

When we are told that IT generates a great part of Bangalore’s income, we wonder if there is a difference between price and value. When we are informed, that the dream of Bangalore as a global city is withering, we can ask whether the investors are threatening to move on.

The battlelines seem stark. It is technocracy vs democracy, IT vs Bangalore, Bangalore vs Karnataka. Of course, when Gowda and Dharam Singh talk, one misses the smooth facility of S M Krishna, a politician who could hyphenate the two worlds. The media is unequivocal that the political response is populist, nativist and regressive. It implies that Narayana Murthy belongs to a 21st century knowledge society and Gowda to some early 20th century populist excess. Is the media creating a deceptive narrative?

In the mind of the media, Bangalore has functioned as a city state. But city states like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles seem to understand that while they are growth centres, the relation of city to the hinterland is crucial.

Politics looks tired and frazzled next to the IT onslaught. IT as a world stretches beyond the suffocation of the bureaucratic state. IT represents middle-class desire and consumption and politics appears populist and empty. But let us not forget that politics as a space has been much more open in India than bureaucracy, industry or management. IT also has a sense of openness but it is the dynamics of India accessing a global world. The voice of IT as a pressure group is heard all over. All politics is trying to do is to provide it a hearing aid.

Politics reminds the world of IT of its narrowness as an imagination. Indian IT is a homogenised space that can’t even claim a powerful philanthropic impact despite the efforts of Premji, Nilekani, or Narayana Murthy. What social revolution has the IT industry created?

The above questions are not as naive as they appear. While IT might be dominant, it should have a sense of history, especially of Bangalore as a progressive city. Its Dewans, especially Visvesveraya, were dreamers and planners. They built modern-day Bangalore. The government notion of Bangalore as the home of space, aircraft and electronic research strengthened this. However, when IT behaves as if it inaugurated the modern history of Bangalore even the most passive would object. When IT talks, other imaginations have to give way.

Narayana Murthy is important but so are U R Ananthamurthy, the late D R Nagaraj and Subanna as social imaginations. As embodiments of literary creativity, they have a lot to tell IT, that IT as information does not exhaust either knowledge or culture, that IT needs a wider philanthropic imagination, that its notion of the city is narrowly pragmatic and instrumental.

Forget management or economics courses. The IIM at Bangalore is not going to provide a critique of its IT. IT has to confront its embedding in the culture of Karnataka, in the imagination of Kannada literary movement which have asked more powerful and courageous questions of science and technology than IT can. I have a simple request. Narayana Murthy and the IT dons should go down to Heggudu and watch the yearly debates of the Ninasam culture group, debating technology, violence, consumption and freedom by examining plays, politics and culture.

IT has created capital, even social capital. But its understanding of cultural capital is minute. It has to learn that markets don’t exhaust democracy or the imagination of cities.

Technocratic fundamentalism can be a real danger, as regressive as the sons of the soil movements that have haunted modern Bangalore. Gowda is only the most recent of a long time of populist politicians saying that democracy needs something more than technocratic competence, that delivery in terms of service has to combine with sensitivities to voices, life worlds beyond IT.

It is true that the recent controversies around Bangalore and IT will affect the brand name of the city. One must confess brand names are crucial. They determine the quantum of investment and even channelise flow of tourism. The question we have to confront is whether we could broaden Brand Bangalore to include wider notions of access and entitlements, quality of life, rights and justice.

In the club-like world of IT, the sons of the soil controversy can be read as noise. But noise as the communication expert, Colin Cherry said, is but unwelcome music. One hopes Bangalore listens to the voices of these sounds of protest in reconstructing the new symphony of the city.