On the 60th anniversary of our independence from the clutches of the colonial rule, it is imperative to ask and to assess how free are we today – to breathe clean and fresh air, to walk without severances in our own neighborhoods, to access drinkable water, to eat and live healthy and to choose our livelihood – in the city or village, we live in?
Are we becoming enslaved to an overpowering pursuit of globalization? - at the cost of destroying our local habitat and making it unlivable.
Can Bangalore leverage its advantages in research, IT and other technologies and its remarkable economic success to solve its problems – its unruly traffic; poor air quality and road safety; its dirty or disappearing lakes and ground water; and similar problems in managing its food supply chain, greenery, housing and land-use planning, electricity and waste ? Can it turn its impending crises on its head?
Building on its success as a Global Outsourcing hub, can Bangalore "upgrade" to become a Knowledge and Innovation Hub? Will Insourcing become Bangalore's new mantra?
Bangalore can leverage its advantages - in Research, IT/ITeS, Telecom, Bio-technology etc. - to solve multifarious problems of transport, air and water pollution, road safety, food supply, housing etc. At the same time, Bangalore can emerge as a national hub for IT-driven urban infrastructure and management and a global hub in the near future. For a city that has brought so much pride and glory to the country in recent times, can it rise up to the new challenges?
15 years of its glorious rise later, Bangalore's IT industry has tapped into a scarce pool of talent - engineers, graduates, post-grads and management professionals. Should it continue to primarily export all its services? Or should it contemplate developing solutions for the country beginning with Bangalore itself and self-regulate to commit 15-20% of its resources to the local needs, just as farmers are prohibited by law to export 100% of their produce even if agricultural produce prices become lucrative in the international market.
Just as the country would have a food crisis and millions would starve, export-oriented IT companies must realize how they are "crowding out" domestic market companies for skilled labour force, making it scarce or cost-prohibitive for companies which address local needs to hire good talent.
How do we gear up for a healthy and appreciating rupee that is close to its purchasing power parity and make it attractive to do business locally? In a remarkable way, a healthy domestic market will also provide a buffer for "outsourcing" export-oriented companies not to undercut each other on their billings to appropriate projects and upgrade to a new phase of Innovation-led growth.
As Bangalore introspects into its problems and develops pathbreaking solutions to become a truly world-class city, it can also package and export to rest of the world as its mantra to a new phase of growth and sustained profitability. This is what can be called - " Insourcing".
There is a seminar conducted on this in the Windsor Manor Sheraton on the 15th of this month from 3.30 PM. People interested in our city will find it interesting.
2 comments:
Rama,
A very good thought and post.
"I have been wanting to blog for sometime, but due to time constraints." -
This happens with everyone. We have a family, profession, and many more things to do. But still we want to blog and keep in touch with other friends. For example, if I had not read your blog I would not have been aware of what is happening in Bangalore.
I have been hearing about Bangalore traffic for the past few years from my friends. I think definitely something should be done on a warfoot manner to solve this crisis. I met someone from Bangalore recently in London. He was surprised with the roads and network here. There is no point in countries like India boasting about the economy when they major problem with the transportation and networks. Road network is very important for a developing country. India should plan a lot on its roadways and railways and improve vastly on this area to accomodate the future expansions. There is no point in looking only into the income of the treasuries. They should also start thinking productively with traffic in major cities.
"Are we becoming enslaved to an overpowering pursuit of globalization? - at the cost of destroying our local habitat and making it livable" -
This should strike every common man.
beautiful, well articulated post. Thanks for the nice read.
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