Jun 17 2008
Mumbai and Bangalore top CEO list of favorite business cities
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.
