Thoughts on Bangalore
After spending 3 days there, I decided it's time for some reflection. Bangalore is a city of contrasts. I'm told that's quite common in India, but it's new to me. The airport is 40km from the city center, so it's a haul just to get into town. There's one road, and it's awful, even by Indian standards. I say that as a former resident of New Orleans, mind you. This road had so many "diversions" (detours) around pockets of construction that our route was probably twice as long due to all the zig zagging. I suppose the construction is a positive sign, but let's talk about that for a moment.
Construction is everywhere in Bangalore. Every block, every street, downtown, the suburbs. There seems to be 6,394 buildings going up, all of this are 20% complete. I'm no structural engineer, but it appears to me that none of them are being worked on. At all. It's like they lay a foundation and stack some cinder blocks for walls, then leave. Same is true of the roads. They're building a "flyover" to the airport, what we'd call a elevated, limited access interstate, but it's also 20% done. Massive concrete pylons reach to the sky where eventually they'll support a road deck, but there's no road deck to be found on 35 of those 40km. Only when you get to the city have they actually started putting it in place.
The closest thing I've experienced to Bangalore is Panama City, but it's important to distinguish the difference in scale. Panama is not a big city, even by US standards. It's got 800,000 people which makes it roughly the size of Indianapolis. Panama city is more dense than Indy of course, but you get the idea. Bangalore has 8.4 MILLION people. That makes it the size of New York city, kids. And they DO have the same density, it's just that Bangalore has about 20% of the number of sky-scrapers. So imagine Manhattan with a much smaller skyline and 6,000,000 of its residents living in Central park. And cut all the taxi cabs in THIRDS, give them three wheels and a scooter engine. And some cows walking through times square. And no traffic signals or lane markers, at all. The horn honking is 24/7 relentless. Now you're getting the idea.
Bangalore is effectively the tech city of India. It's where many of the IT services firms are based, so HP has 3 offices there and lots of customers. The office buildings are nice enough, but typically gated off. There's a small army of private security people, building maintenance staff, and high-rate taxis that make-up a sort of micro-economy that lives off all this foreign direct investment. FYI a high-rate taxi has doors, A/C, and you can hire him for $50/day to be your personal chauffeur, in fact that's the most common arrangement. The 3-wheel auto-rickshaws are open air (a terrible idea for both safety and comfort reasons) and you could hire one of them for $5/day, but why the hell would you? Even the locals who can, don't.
So you've got some nice buildings where foreign companies have offices, and some nice hotels to support the foreigners when they come visit. This represents probably 20% of the buildings in the city. Another 10% or so is occupied by military installations. Bangalore was a big base for parts of the British military when this was a colony, so the Indians have kept it that way. The air force, military police, army rangers and border security all have training bases around the city.
This leaves about 66% of the city to what I'd call "normal" Bangalore. This component is everything you've ever stereotyped about a 3rd world country and then some. Tin shacks. 3rd hand tire stores for your scooter. Stray dogs sifting through trash piles on the side of the road, along with cows, pigs, and people doing the same thing. Power outages. Buildings falling apart to the point you can't tell whether they're occupied, abandoned, or under construction. Pretty much a whole lot of poverty with a small (but growing) middle class.
So here's what astounds me - these are some of the nicest, most optimistic, energetic people I've ever met. They are hard working, and they've latched on to a concept that was once common in America: work hard and your employer will take care of you, you will make a decent living, and you can give your kids the chance at an even better life than what you enjoy. I'm not even sure that's true in America anymore, but it definitely IS true in India. A job at HP India is highly regarded, and highly coveted. It's like Ford and Oldsmobile competing for labor in the early 1900s - benefits are a competitive differentiator. HP takes care of you, your wife & kids, and your parents! The positive attitude of the Indian people amazes me.
More from Delhi later this week.
Construction is everywhere in Bangalore. Every block, every street, downtown, the suburbs. There seems to be 6,394 buildings going up, all of this are 20% complete. I'm no structural engineer, but it appears to me that none of them are being worked on. At all. It's like they lay a foundation and stack some cinder blocks for walls, then leave. Same is true of the roads. They're building a "flyover" to the airport, what we'd call a elevated, limited access interstate, but it's also 20% done. Massive concrete pylons reach to the sky where eventually they'll support a road deck, but there's no road deck to be found on 35 of those 40km. Only when you get to the city have they actually started putting it in place.
The closest thing I've experienced to Bangalore is Panama City, but it's important to distinguish the difference in scale. Panama is not a big city, even by US standards. It's got 800,000 people which makes it roughly the size of Indianapolis. Panama city is more dense than Indy of course, but you get the idea. Bangalore has 8.4 MILLION people. That makes it the size of New York city, kids. And they DO have the same density, it's just that Bangalore has about 20% of the number of sky-scrapers. So imagine Manhattan with a much smaller skyline and 6,000,000 of its residents living in Central park. And cut all the taxi cabs in THIRDS, give them three wheels and a scooter engine. And some cows walking through times square. And no traffic signals or lane markers, at all. The horn honking is 24/7 relentless. Now you're getting the idea.
Bangalore is effectively the tech city of India. It's where many of the IT services firms are based, so HP has 3 offices there and lots of customers. The office buildings are nice enough, but typically gated off. There's a small army of private security people, building maintenance staff, and high-rate taxis that make-up a sort of micro-economy that lives off all this foreign direct investment. FYI a high-rate taxi has doors, A/C, and you can hire him for $50/day to be your personal chauffeur, in fact that's the most common arrangement. The 3-wheel auto-rickshaws are open air (a terrible idea for both safety and comfort reasons) and you could hire one of them for $5/day, but why the hell would you? Even the locals who can, don't.
So you've got some nice buildings where foreign companies have offices, and some nice hotels to support the foreigners when they come visit. This represents probably 20% of the buildings in the city. Another 10% or so is occupied by military installations. Bangalore was a big base for parts of the British military when this was a colony, so the Indians have kept it that way. The air force, military police, army rangers and border security all have training bases around the city.
This leaves about 66% of the city to what I'd call "normal" Bangalore. This component is everything you've ever stereotyped about a 3rd world country and then some. Tin shacks. 3rd hand tire stores for your scooter. Stray dogs sifting through trash piles on the side of the road, along with cows, pigs, and people doing the same thing. Power outages. Buildings falling apart to the point you can't tell whether they're occupied, abandoned, or under construction. Pretty much a whole lot of poverty with a small (but growing) middle class.
So here's what astounds me - these are some of the nicest, most optimistic, energetic people I've ever met. They are hard working, and they've latched on to a concept that was once common in America: work hard and your employer will take care of you, you will make a decent living, and you can give your kids the chance at an even better life than what you enjoy. I'm not even sure that's true in America anymore, but it definitely IS true in India. A job at HP India is highly regarded, and highly coveted. It's like Ford and Oldsmobile competing for labor in the early 1900s - benefits are a competitive differentiator. HP takes care of you, your wife & kids, and your parents! The positive attitude of the Indian people amazes me.
More from Delhi later this week.
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