15th March 2007, the day when I moved to Bangalore to experience "the hype" about this city.
I was very excited about the prospects for working in the IT capital of the country. All along the way from Hyderabad I was thinking about the things i would do in Bangalore.
One week past and I didn't find anything exciting, I thought I haven't explored enough, so I started going to all the places I heard were good....and believe me none of them were even close to the "happening" places in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune or for that matter any class A city in the country.
The search for "good and happening" places was over in a month’s time, with not many results (except for a few gud pubs). And now the search was on for gud place to live (all this while I crashed in a dingy PG). and then i started getting the shocks....shitty places, no ventilation, rat holes for rooms, no parking space....and people aren't ashamed of opening there mouths for the rent. I had terrible experiences with brokers and land-lords, one years rent in advance (u think that's joke) and the rent for a dingy flat 15000/-. These people are out of there minds. And the only possible explanation they have for such rent is "You can catch the office bus at the end of the road". Can u beat that!!!
But soon we managed to find a flat with all the basic amenities (thanks to a very considerate land lord). The story doesn't end here. As I started spending more and more time here I realized that things have gone terribly wrong with this place. The roads are all broke, the power supply is a problem, improper sanitation, the traffic jams never seem to end.....and I can go on all about it and no one seems to be bothered about. The auto-wallahs here are probably the most rude, mean, inconsiderate lot in the whole country, the moment they realize that you are working for an IT firm (and the icing on the cake is if u r a north-indian) they will try to extract every penny from your pocket. But they are not the only ones to be blamed for this behaviour, we are equally responsible, we believe that bargaining is a middle class habit (and since when did 15-20k a month earning engineers become upper class), infact we don't even care to wait for another auto who cud be more reasonable, we just pay him whatever he asks for.
Despite all these problems i often questioned what is/are the reason(s) for the IT industry to set up its base here, why not anywhere else. The few things that i cud think about were 1. The climate, 2. The people who started the IT revolution were primarily from Bangalore (or for that matter parts of Karnataka) 3. The infrastructure it enjoyed 10 years ago (sounds like ages ago).
But all that has gone now...the infrastructure has crumbled under the population pressure, the climate has gone haywire thanks to the ever increasing pollution.
It's not that these problems cannot be sorted...but there needs to be a political and social will to do it, the political class in Karnataka is least bothered about Bangalore as it accounts to less than 10% of their total vote bank, the people are a way too busy with their work and so have left the city to the dogs (literally).
With the way the conditions are deteriorating and the hostility towards IT growing among locals, it wouldn’t be far when the IT companies move their operations to cities like Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai, and Noida...
