Will Bengaluru improve?

Will Bengaluru improve?
Daily News and Analysis

As Bangalore takes on a new name, familiar problems dog tech hub

BANGALORE: Bengaluru - As India’s tech hub goes back to this pre-colonial name from Wednesday, there is a cry from its citizens to reinvent the city and its annual IT mela, the Bangalore IT.in.

With successive governments paying lip service to improve its public transport system and eliminate traffic snarls that force techies and honchos glued to their car seats for hours, the country’s Silicon Valley is now slowly losing its sheen.

“Bangalore does not have the same ability to attract companies and create new jobs it had five years ago. There is a feeling that the tech industry does not matter any more,” Infosys co-founder and deputy managing director S Gopalakrishnan said at the CEO conclave of the Bangalore IT.in.

It is not just the executive from Infosys, which was under attack during the same time last year from former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda, but many top honchos concur that things have turned worse since then.

Gowda’s son, H D Kumaraswamy now leads a JDS BJP coalition government in the state and has assured attention to the tech sector that contributes over 25% to Karnataka’s GDP, but the progress has been slow.

“The government needs the right attitude to solve the issues facing the city,” Telecom product firm Subex Azure Managing Director Subhash Menon said. The state has seen three IT secretaries- M K Shankaralinge Gowda, Anup K Pujari and the M N Vidyashankar in the last year.

The latest edition of Bangalore IT.in concluded on Tuesday with lukewarm response from corporates and visitors and the event, started with the aim of attracting investment into the state, is becoming a ground for rival states and countries to lure companies.