Not this past weekend but the weekend before James and I took a three-day trip to Bangalore, the “IT City” of India. If you’ve ever read Thomas Friedman’s book “The World is Flat”, you will recognize that Bangalore (actually now Bengaluru) is the up-and-coming city he talks about extensively as an example of the world being “flattened” by technology.
Bangalore is quite a sight to behold. I haven’t gotten a chance to travel too much here in India so I’m not sure how it compares to other big cities such as Delhi and Mumbai, but man oh man is Bangalore different from rural south-east India. Stepping off the five hour train from Chennai into Bangalore was like stepping into a different country in some ways. Sure there were stray cows here and there on the city sidewalks, and sure there were lots of urban poor. But instead of grass-roofed huts they have enormous IT buildings, and instead of roadside “tandoor” shops selling street food they have McDonalds and KFC (albeit with “veggie burgers” instead of the usual fare). Bangalore looks like a growing place, a city on the move, really on the rise. A new metro system is going in, and new luxury malls are starting to appear in the nicer section of town. Outside the city in the aptly named suburban area of “Electronics City” familiar companies such as Siemens, IBM, Goldman Sachs, and GE have their sprawling corporate offices, side by side with Indian companies such as Infosys and the Bank of India. We had a great time exploring the city, meeting up with some foreigners at last (no foreigners except us out here at CR, which is why we cause such a fuss everywhere we go) and enjoying some non-south Indian food for once.
After living for a month in rural India, where we literally drive over harvests that are laid out on the road, where seeing oxen teams pulling carts on the National Highway is a daily occurrence, and where many villages don’t have electricity let alone internet, seeing a different side of India was very interesting. Bangalore is also a mix of people—although it is in the Indian state of Karnataka, there are people from all over India who have migrated there for work, including the people from neighboring Tamil Nadu (where I’ve been living) who originally came to the city to work under the British rulers. This diversity is apparent from even a walk into a movie store—there are sections with movies in English, Hindi, Tamil, Teluga, Hindi, and more. Over the years they’ve developed a very cosmopolitan and diverse city with Indians from many different backgrounds all living together, speaking different languages, and becoming the entrepreneurs and leaders of their country’s future.
It’s inspiring and amazing to see. If India continues growing at the rate it has been and is successful in modernizing and educating its citizens, this could be what the majority of Indian cities look like 50 years from now. 50 years from now these poor rural farmers who pick their rice by hand and walk around the dusty Indian roads in rags and without shoes could be living in a nice house in the suburbs of a developed city. It almost sounds ridiculous given just how poor most people here are, but it is a future that could yet become a reality. India is rising. I can’t wait to come back for another visit in 50 years and see the difference.
Bangalore
Rural India
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