Don’t bully B’lore, give the new CM some time

Don’t bully B’lore, give the new CM some time
New Indian Express

It has become a fashion these days to bully Bangalore. Or emotionally armtwist the City.

The traffic crawls, many roads either do not exist or are pot-holed, the crime graph is soaring, the sugar-coated climate is changing, the airport is little better than the railway station, land prices and flats almost touch the sky and this is the only city where planning can go so wonky that a flyover can have a traffic light bang in the middle!

Is Bangalore that bad or is it that it has grown to its maximum capacity?

In London, peak time traffic speed is 10 kmph - the same as it was two centuries ago when the city had horse-drawn coaches!

The distance between Sharjah and Dubai is just 15 km, but it can take you more than two hours to travel during peak hours, and longer on Thursdays.

The same is the case in other major cities across the world. So, do industries move out? Yes, occasionally they do, but with no rancour.

Bangalore was once a Pensioners’ Paradise. You cannot expect such a city to grow young overnight. It obviously creates a disorientation.

Bangalore made the big mistake of attracting all its business to the heart of the city. Hyderabad did the wise thing by locating the new and emerging IT hubs in Madhapur, a village outside Hyderabad, and then building entertainment hot spots and other facilities around them.

As a result Abid’s Road, once a crowded business beehive of Hyderabad and a poor cousin of Bangalore’s Commercial Street, is no longer a hangout for techies and geeks.

Madhapur and adjoining areas of Jubilee Hills are today’s happening spots of Cyberabad.

In Karnataka it is time for the government and business houses to sit and talk. Chief Minister H.D.Kumaraswamy has asked for three months to set things right.

While this is a short period, in all fairness he must be given an opportunity and the time to prove himself.

Companies need to look at the opportunities emerging in tier-II cities like Mysore, Mangalore and Hubli-Dharwad.

Major business houses have started tapping opportunities in emerging cities. For example, Forbes has rated Pune as the third best emerging city in the world, just after Chengdu in China and Toulouse in France.

Companies like Motorola, Intel and Microsoft have established a major presence in the western boomtown of Chengdu in China, thanks to government support.

Chengdu is fast becoming China’s Silicon Valley, drawing smart young workers from all over the country.

Toulouse boasts of the second highest concentration of universities in France after Paris, and business houses are tapping this opportunity. Pune has a different story.

It has grown in the shadow of Mumbai and is now benefiting from the spillover of the latter’s growth.

Mumbai is so full and so poorly designed to cater to the needs of greenfield industries that many businesses are looking to Pune for a fresh start.

The story is the same in other major emerging dream cities - Warsaw, Dubai, Curitiba in Brazil and Tripoli in Libya.

Why can’t this happen in Karnataka? Why not? For this, look beyond Bangalore.