The "embarrassment" called Bangalore

The "embarrassment" called Bangalore
The Hindu Business Line

As Dr Yuwa Hedrick-Wong waxed eloquent on the different kinds of corruption in emerging economies - organised and disorganised - one had to ask him about India.

In India, he said, corruption was differentiated by both industry and geographic location. "IT is extremely clean because as an industry it was created after the Nehruvian era of all those regulations. They didn't have this industry to regulate then, so nobody could throw a book at you and say look you need this permission or that! But even in IT, you still have in Bangalore the fight between (Infosys' Narayana) Murthy and the local government."

He added that corruption in India varied with the geographic location of the business and was dependent on the local government. "If the local government supports you, then they become like the Chinese government and remove all obstacles to facilitate you. But then India is also a democracy. Bangalore gets a new government and they refuse to invest in the city, saying rural areas are more important, because the votes come from there! Imagine in the IT capital of India the roads crumbling, and the airport is so bad that it is embarrassing." Dr Yuwa said that thanks to Bangalore's status as the IT capital of India, businessmen from all over the world come there.

"They have one international gate at the airport. And often there is just standing room when there are two flights, and you can't find a chair. I could see IBM executives standing at the airport! So in India, a lot depends on the local government and unfortunately they come and go, as we found in Bangalore recently."