Maverick in traffic!

Hello Readers

How are you today?

Work hard, work harder, work with efficiency, work in cooperative spirit

Work with a team spirit to make your country great, self-supporting and strong.

-Sir M Visvesvaraya

The greatest civil engineer ever lived in India.

They say a plan is first blotted in mind and then on a sheet of paper and then they bring it to life.

In fact, India is known to be the center of architectural marvel and the Aw aspiring temples, church and Sufi architecture and other learning centers.

The I.T( Information Technology) capital of the country "Bengaluru" buzzing with young minds trying to solve the analytical assignments challenged to them inside the glass doors of their workplace.

Well, it is rightly quoted by many that, "Bengaluru is the silicon valley of India".

That looks very good on papers, but that is the ground reality of the commuters!

What are the perils and pitfalls of the industry, the ripples created on the infrastructure of this once beautiful city?

Usually a motivational blogger and what they call the optimistic types  I choose to be realistic and grim about this one.

Starting in the 1980s, Karnataka emerged as the information technology capital of the country. A total of 1973 companies in Karnataka are involved in Information Technology related business, including big firms like Infosys and Wipro who have their headquarters in Bangalore. The origin of the growth of the software industry in Karnataka seems to have been the entry of Texas Instruments which was the first multinational to set up base in Sona Tower, Millers Road, Bangalore in 1985.

Texas Instruments was searching for a location to set up their overseas development center in India in the early 1980s. They first looked at the states of Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, but when both states refused permission, Karnataka was approached with the condition that land allotted must be near an airport.

The then chief minister of Karnataka Gundu Rao agreed to their terms and granted land near the H.A.L. Airport in Bangalore. Texas Instruments currently has a large facility in Bagmane Tech Park in Bangalore near the airport.

There were many factors conducive to the development of the software industry in Karnataka state.

One factor is the presence of large numbers of top-grade science and engineering institutions like IISc, NITK, B.M.S. College of Engineering, B.V.B., Malnad College of Engineering MSRIT, N.I.E., SJCE, RVCE, PESIT, SDMCET and around 200 engineering colleges.

 The software industry requires large numbers of skilled engineers which are regularly churned out of the engineering colleges in Karnataka.

 The presence of Public sector undertakings like B.E.L., H.A.L., BHEL, I.T.I. And BEML gave ready access to manpower as well as trial opportunities of the newly developed software. There were many advanced laboratories like N.A.L. and ISRO in and around Bangalore which provided necessary basic knowledge required for software development.

The successive state governments have been proactive in providing essential facilities for the growth of the industry. The salubrious climate of Bangalore also helps in the growth of the software industry there. ( numbers and names Wikipedia)

When we come to the post-2006 era, when large companies like Infosys, H.C.L.- Tech Wipro, Satyam had passed the sigmoid it was sure that the Bengaluru will become the future I.T. hub of India.

The effects

There have been both positive and negative effects of the boom. Well for any onlooker it is evident that the per capita income of the state has risen, the software engineers earn the salaries at the beginning of the career what their parents earned during the time of their superannuation.

The downside

There has been a decline of quality engineers passing out of colleges, they are just manufactured engineers who are designed to clear corporate interviews. The Government too has made getting a government job like sour grapes which can't be reached.

Even though the earning capacity of an individual increased substantially, they do not know what to with the remuneration so technically there is a trend towards financial illiteracy.

The apocalypse effect!

Now the once garden city has become a concrete city with just huge megalithic apartments all around us! Definitely, jobs draw population, and that population brings its own needs, and that has to be catered.

But there is a point when the land cannot take much of human interventions which have led to catastrophes in the recent past examples, flooding of roads, the low laying areas being submerged during rains.

We, the citizens, don't speak much and try to be more and more supportive of solving the civic problems by ourselves. Still, if the public works department is in a state of apathy, with the unplanned development of infrastructure, I think we are in a state of emergency.

Recently I read an article where Bengaluru one of the well-planned cities in Asia has the worst traffic management in the world surpassing even New Delhi.

My reaction was not surprising, but it was disappointment and shallow, imagine you are trying to build sub-urban trains, metro rails. As a result, you block roads, but are we living in a superman era where everything can work as a click?

I took this picture last week! to show the poor utilities given  to workmen, in this case they were mixing water using paper cups! To complete a footpath construction!

Why is there is no planning, and what an everyday commuter can witness is just apathy on the road and feel depressed about it.

We all as the daily users of the roads and infrastructure who generate economy for this country should definitely start questioning the authorities about their plans and deadlines! And question their logic and timing of destroying roads and trees!

Let me know your thoughts on this all-important one.

Thanks a lot for your time.

Helios.