An experiment in light expression

The Economic times reported the results of an interesting CEO survey.
CEOs believe that Mumbai and Bangalore are India’s cities of the future while Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore (in that order) are India’s most investor friendly cities at the moment.

Patna and Guwahati were perceived to be the most investor - unfriendly cities.

The rankings relatively make sense to me - Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore are arguably the  Indian cities most geared and oriented towards global business and global competition. They still retain a strong vernacular flavor but their human resource base has become fairly international and the quality of corporate goods and services continues to improve (despite the absolutely shoddy infrastructure, especially in Bangalore).

However, I also believe that atleast for Bangalore the rising costs, increasing crime, political instability, slipshod infrastructure and absurd and nonsensical rules (like the curfew at 11:30 pm and the ban on dance floors) have made it quite unattractive for the creative class that Richard Florida keeps talking about. If all the interesting people that made Bangalore what it is leave it or become uninteresting, dull and mediocre then I would imagine that Bangalore will quickly lose the branding it has projected to the international business community.

Plus, it would be a darned boring place to live, notwithstanding the mostly congenial weather!
Or maybe its just that I’m recovering from my Mumbai weekend hangover - but more on that in another post.

It is around 730 am in the morning and I am headed towards Bangalore International Airport to catch a flight to Nagpur. The experience thus far has been reasonable enough - the Airlift shared cab was waiting for me on time on Old Madras Road, my Tata Indicom wireless connection (despite some serious troubles in activating it) seems to be giving enough signal strength to blog live and Outer Ring road seems a lot less maddening at this time of the day.

Where is the Bangalore ecosystem headed - its a question I ask myself everyday. On the one hand (now don’t start off with Roosevelt’s assertion about wanting to meet only one handed economists) it has the trappings of a network hub with the necessary knowledge infrastructure, talented and creative people, a pace of life which is still slower than Mumbai and Delhi by a healthy factor (some might argue that geographically the main Bangalore region is not more than a few Mumbai or Delhi suburbs), and a fairly aggressive consumer spending base not just through IT professionals but also otherwise. On the other hand having experienced the absolutely anarchic traffic situation, the 11:30 pm curfews, the mundaneness of the MG Road area, the soulless and relentless construction and the blase attitude of may of this city’s residents, I tend to also wonder if Bangalore is a blip, a brief burst on the horizon which fades away into the sunset with a one liner in history textbooks.
Anyways, I need some coffee soon in my system …