In Bangalore urban agglomeration, the share of the informal sector in 1971 was between 50%

and 60% of the work force, but by 1991, its share was between 65% and 72%. The majority of
jobs reported in the authors surveys were in self-employment activities. Nearly 61% of
enterprises procured raw materials from other informal establishments, demonstrating strong
backward linkages, while 71% of these units sold their products to the informal sector (21% sold
to non-governmental organizations).

Personal job histories also suggested that there was little mobility between formal and informal
sectors. Less than 30% of entrepreneurs had borrowed from commercial or co-operative banks or
from government departments, the majority relying on their families or on moneylenders
charging interest between 60 and 120% annually. Most persons responding to his survey were
members of scheduled castes or scheduled tribes (Thippaiah 1993: 116-19, 225, 267, 272-75,
297-319).

During the 1980s, led by Wipro and Infosys, a number of private enterprises specializing in
computer systems and software production began to emerge in Bangalore, founded by managers
with technology expertise in Indias public sector enterprises or in foreign firms, typically in the
United States or Europe. These new firms supplemented their turnover from the developing
microcomputer market in India with body shopping for foreign companies, earning a
transnational reputation for quality services at low cost. Their operations began to go online in
1987, when INTELSAT Business Service offered the possibility of sending messages at 64 kbps
for organizations that could maintain a ground station and software.

The US-based Texas Instruments established an agreement with Indias Videsh Sanchar Nigam
Limited (VSNL) that made possible the first offshore software production centre in the city
(Singhal and Rogers 1989; Heitzman 1999). Texas Instruments obtained ground station
equipment and software and transferred them to VSNL, which maintained the facility with
bandwidth up to 256 kbps. Signals went through satellite to a station in Beford, UK, and then the
United States.

Two years later, VSNL set up a second ground station for the exclusive use of ISRO, which
maintained and operated it. There was a plan to install a similar ground station for the
Aeronautical Development Authority, a defence agency working on the light commercial vehicle
in consultation with British Aerospace (BAE). This third ground station became operational after
Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) utilized it at 128 kbps for a new software consortium
(BAE-HAL) in 1991.3

Looking at these changes in organizational capacity, market demand, and technological

feasibility, the Department of Electronics (DOE) developed the Software Technology Park (STP)
scheme designed to attract offshore software production houses and 100% export oriented units
to government managed facilities offering broadband communication networks, reliable
infrastructure, tax breaks, and tariff-free imports of equipment. DOE decided to establish one of
its initial six STPs4 on the campus of Electronics City in Bangalore, renting space in a building
constructed by the Karnataka State Department of Small Scale Industries.

The STP acquired Bangalores fourth ground station in 1992, which VSNL operated and
maintained with bandwidth of 64 kbps. STPs broadband communication system called SoftNET,
first established in Bangalore, offered international leased lines, email, video conferencing, and
shared internet service. The network operations centre with uplink facilities allowed contact to
Amsterdam, and from there to European addresses or through optical cable to Washington DC.
An Ethernet local area network allowed access for companies on campus through a fibre optic
backbone, while companies elsewhere in the Bangalore region accessed the network through
dial-up or through microwave.5

Although it regularly operated at a loss, KEONICS continued to bill itself as spearheading the
electronics revolution in Karnataka, and began to re-conceive publicity for the Electronics City
project within the context of a telematics revolution. While its tenants regularly complained
about poor roads, power and water supply, KEONICS claimed initially that the title of Silicon
Valley of India belonged in particular to the Electronics City campus.6 As its publicity campaign
evolved, the term began to expand to include Bangalore as a whole.

As part of its promotion materials, KEONICS distributed a reprint of articles from Plus: The
Total Computer Magazine with a cover story entitled Can Bangalore Become Indias Silicon
Valley? The publication presented regular references to 1987 studies of the city funded by the
United States Agency for International Development (USAID) that favourably evaluated the
capacity of Bangalore to become a high technology centre in a model similar to Silicon Valley,
offering opportunities for expanding Indo-U.S. business contacts.7 The publication also presented
interviews conducted with professionals from the Indian electronics industry, revealing the
combination of hopes for future intervention by the government, enthusiasm for the future
tempered by realism, and blatant boosterism.
Selected quotes from these interviews included the following: If the Centre looks at Bangalore
to be made into Silicon Valley, it would certainly become the Silicon Valley; If you are talking of
a Silicon Valley kind of atmosphere, then Bangalore already has it, but if you are talking of a
product a day, then we are far from it; Bangalore is certainly emerging as a software and R&D
subcontracting centre for multinationals; It is not an unreasonable comparison to make between
Bangalore city and Silicon Valley; Bangalore has the ingredients to become Silicon Valley... It is
probably the only city in India that could become one.

The success of the STP scheme led to a private initiative called the Information Technology
Park, the first such development in India, which was a joint collaboration between the state
government and private enterprise from India and Singapore.8 The original idea for this project
emerged during a meeting in 1992 between Indian Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao and
Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong.

During the following year members of the Tata Group conferred with colleagues in Singapore,
leading to a joint proposal to the Government of Karnataka in July 1993. This resulted in the
official launching ceremony of the project in January 1994 as a Rs 1,200 crore ($665 million)
construction scheme involving Tata Industries Limited (contributing 40%), a consortium of six
Singapore companies called Information Technology Park PTE Limited (contributing 40%),9 and
the Karnataka Industrial Areas Development Board, which contributed 20% through 55 acres of
land in the Whitefield Industrial Area east of Bangalore. Expected turnover from the project was
projected at Rs 2,000 crore ($1.1 billion), with about half coming from exports, and direct
employment generated by the project was estimated at 17,000.

The Department of Telecommunications provided a dedicated telephone exchange to the park,

initially for 1,000 lines but expandable to 10,000 lines, while VSNL arranged access to
international digital leased lines, email and video conferencing through Bangalores fifth ground
station. The campus aspired to be a self-contained world maintained to an international standard.
A professional management team will provide an efficient service to ensure that all occupants
will enjoy the highest level of comfort living and working within the Park (ITP 1997: 17).

Construction began in early 1995. Within four years, the park had achieved 60% occupancy and
work began on the residential towers, with a 15-person team in Singapore and India aggressively
marketing the project. The official inauguration of the park in January 2000 by Goh Chok Tong
took place amid self congratulatory statements on the towering icon of the good relations that
Singapore enjoys with India. To celebrate the auspicious occasion, the signing of 28 new
agreements brought the park to 75% occupancy.10
The promotional video prepared by the marketing team, which I viewed at the park in 1997,
unabashedly pushed the Silicon Valley of India image, with its theme the future is here.
According to the video, there was no shortage of excellent, cheap labour for software
development. There were interviews with recent graduates of technical schools who were ready
to work for $400 per month, and interviews with children who were eager to go into the
computer field.

The connection with world-class research and educational institutions was explicit: Students in
Bangalore grow up in a unique educational environment... in the shadow of the Indian Institute
of Science. At the same time, Indian entrepreneurs and expatriates alike could enjoy a
sophisticated corporate image... located in the green belt of Bangalore, complete with
international schools, two international championship 18-hole golf courses, private clubs with a
colonial ambience, and Bangalores pub scene. The video summed up the transnational vision:

Indeed, Bangalore offers all the comforts and conveniences of city life in a Garden City, one that
expatriates can easily adjust to and thoroughly enjoy. Thus, it is no coincidence that so many
multinational companies have chosen to locate their businesses in Bangalore, and Indians dream
of working and living here.

Since the early 20th century, Bangalore has lived on its dreams. In the modernist vision of the
industrial and science city, the future lay in research, development, applied technology, and
planning. In the garden environment, the new middle class and retired pensioners could enjoy
their suburban homes in close proximity to the cathedrals of production. The state was the
comfortable matrix, and often the direct employer, of the managerial or apparatchik groups that
really did benefit from this construction of global modernism that they shared with colleagues
throughout the nation and internationally.

By the 1980s, of course, the mantle of modernity was a bit threadbare, not least because people
were overrunning the city urchins without shoes, immigrants with children who had to work,
the underemployed in hundreds of slums, and religious rioters battling on the streets. The state
was running out of money, the public sector could not innovate fast enough, national sovereignty
was under threat from transnational financial institutions.

On the horizon appeared the concept of globalization, originating within the critique of late
capitalism but now adaptable as an ideology of capitalism moving into a new phase. What
identity could the city claim within this new dispensation? The concept of the technopole
provided the ideal template for the city of the future, an informational city where trained experts
and managers generated new employment within environmentally friendly campuses. Thus
Silicon Valley became the dream of the technologists in Bangalore as it had become the dream of
technologists throughout the world, and the state allied with private initiatives to promote a new
identity for a garden city that, unfortunately, had lost most of its gardens.

We note in passing the important roles played by foreigners in the ideological shift, but it would
be facile and futile to see the shift as a cultural imposition from the outside. Local players were
quite avid in identifying a language that allowed the rationalization of a liberal economic agenda,
exercising their agency in the crafting of a new suburban space.

The examination of Bangalores economic structure in the early 1990s demonstrates that the city
resembled Silicon Valley less than it did a classic Marshallian industrial district, a situation
identified by Markussen and her associates as typical of the second tier city (Markussen et al.
1999). The formal economy still revolved around a number of large public sector enterprises that
were increasingly oriented toward projects involving transnational corporations.

This economy supported specialization in aerospace and ground transport (embodying hi-tech
and mature technologies with plenty of transnational connections), smokestack industries,
automated and non-automated textile production (increasingly oriented toward export), and an
electronics sector that was not directed specifically toward telematics. The formal economy of
Bangalore demonstrated, in fact, a remarkable balance among a variety of industrial sectors.

The massive informal economy, on the other hand, was steadily growing and exerting intense
pressure on social services, public space, and the environment. Perhaps it is here, in the
grotesque distancing of the information economy and the gated urban enclave from the barefoot
boys cleaning dishes behind the tea stalls, that we see the mark of the global, and the
resemblance of Bangalore to other world cities.
Bengaluru beats Silicon Valley, becomes
the most dynamic city in the world
BY ECONOMICTIMES.COM | JAN 18, 2017, 06.39 PM IST
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BY ECONOMICTIMES.COM | JAN 18, 2017, 06.39 PM IST
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Bengaluru has emerged as the most dynamic city in Jones Lang LaSalle's fourth annual City Momentum Index of cities around the world, followed by
Ho Chi Minh City of Vietnam and Silicon Valley in the U.S.

The Index tracks the speed of change of a city's economy and commercial real estate market. It covers 134 major established and emerging business
hubs and identifies cities that have the potential to maintain the greatest dynamism over the short and long term.

Top 10 ci ..

Read more at:

http://economictimes.indiatimes.comhttp://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/bangalore-beats-silicon-valley-becomes-the-most-
dynamic-city-in-the-world/printarticle/56645305.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst
Situated at an altitude of 920 metres above sea level, Bangalore is the principal
administrative, cultural, commercial and industrial centre of the state of Karnataka. The city,
which is spread over an area of 2190 square kilometres, enjoys a pleasant and equable climate
throughout the year. Its tree-lined streets and abundant greenery have led to it being called the
'Garden City' of India. However, since local entrepreneurs and the technology giant Texas
Instruments discovered its potential as a high-tech city in the early 1980s, Bangalore has seen
a major technology boom. It is now home to more than 250 high-tech companies. Including
homegrown giants like Wipro and Infosys. Consequently, now Bangalore is called the 'Silicon
Valley' of India.

Bangalore, the nerve - centre of India's software industry. Its other major industries include
aircraft, electronics and machine tools. Despite being one of Asia's fastest growing cities,
Bangalore remains one of the most elegant metropolises in India. A well - planned city, with
tree - lined avenues, a large number of parks, gardens and lakes, Bangalore is aptly called
India's garden city.

The city attracts people in large numbers, from all over the country, and abroad, who come to
look for better job opportunities, and higher education. Surprisingly, all this frantic industrial
expansion and increase in the population, has not robbed Bangalore of its essential old-world
appeal. It is, in the true sense, a very 'happening' city.