Since hearing about the terror attacks at the Oberoi and Taj Hotels in Mumbai earlier this evening it reminded me of a note I sent friends and family on my last night at the Oberoi Hotel in Bangalore. Over a twenty month period In 2004-06 I travelled to India four times for extended business trips developing a deeper understanding of the fascinating and smart people, rich culture, and its economic transformation and decided to share some of my experiences and thoughts with friends and family — the full note is below with some minor edits to provide context on certain references.
While this evening some sought to destroy the personal friendship and economic relationship that Americans and Indians have formed over the past two decades I am looking forward to my next visit to India to recommit myself to strengthening this relationship and will hopefully be staying at the Oberoi Hotel (it is a magnificent hotel)
Email I sent to family and friends in January 2006 from the Oberoi Hotel in Bangalore:
Surprisingly enough this is my 4th time in Bangalore (each trips of 8+ days) in the past 20 months… here are some general observations on the massive transformation of India that you may find interesting.
There are really two different worlds here in Bangalore. On the one hand the multi-national corporations (MNCs as they are commonly referred to as here) have established what would pass for first-rate campuses. These are not simply large regional hubs akin to those that you see across Europe; rather they are 1,000+ person campuses with bus services for their employees, cafeteria’s serving lunch and dinner, and libraries. Right next door to the temporary Yahoo! offices are Yahoo!’s new Bangalore offices which is being built to accommodate 1500 employees. Across from the Yahoo! office in the same complex are IBM, Microsoft, ANZ (Australian Bank), etc. A bit further down “Ring Road” HP has a 10,000 person campus and the local Indian software services giant Infosys has a 24,000 employee campus. Driving down MG Road or Airport road (two other major streets in Bangalore) one catches a slew of familiar names – Intel, Cisco, Nvidia, etc. each with their own glass corporate office building. All the MNC employees are making good money (avg. pay raise for Indian tech employees was 10% last year and many of them are jumping from job to job as companies promise ever higher salaries) creating significant discretionary income within the Indian economy— one visit to a local mall and you see this discretionary income at work.
The other world here in Bangalore is not that encouraging, but I suspect that in due time this will change. While there are clearly serious socio-economic issues - the caste system, poor educational system for the lower class, disease (AIDS), etc. it is a bit harder to fully understand these without spending considerable time so I will focus on the infrastructure side which is visible, real, and somewhat frustrating to anybody who spends more then a day or two in Bangalore. The airport looks, feels, and probably is a 1950’s era airport that has not seen an upgrade for the past 50+ years. While they do have serious plans to develop a new airport these plans have been on the table for the past 10 years. The first local government signed an agreement with Siemens (or some other western construction company) to construct a new airport, that government was ousted, and succeeding government wanting their share fair of bribes voided the contract with Siemens and put the bid out again. This is just tip of the iceberg, on a more daily basis wild-dogs roam and howl right next door to your 5 star hotel, sidewalks are non-existent, cars overwhelm the small streets bring cars to a literal halt, and the list goes on. The complete lack of infrastructure is frustrating for both citizens and travelers given the billions of dollars flowing into the country on a monthly basis. To give you a sense of the sea of people that devastate the poor infrastructure:
- The Mumbai (Bombay) local train system transports 7 million people every day. Think about that – that is equal to the entire population of Israel everyday. Supposedly it was meant to support 170,000 per day.
- The largest mall in Bangalore that I visited today in probably 1/10 the size of Old Orchard (a mid-sized mall in Skokie, IL) yet the escalators were stacked with 2 to 3 persons per step.
The new national government headed by a Harvard and Oxford economist realizes this, but has been slow to respond. As they say Democracy is messy and the Indians practice a vibrant form of democracy. Beyond the politics there is the simple fact that infrastructure projects just take a while. While you can get a new call center up and running in Bangalore in 3 months or less; building a new airport, bridges, highways, or a new light rail system just takes longer.
There is no high-minded conclusion… just some thoughts on these exciting times in India that I have been privileged to experience in the past 20 months.
Update Novemeber 2008: Excited to see that the new Bangalore Interational Airport recently opened. Now its America’s turn to rebuild its infrastructure which finally seems bound to happen.