In less than three weeks, I will have lived in Bangalore for three years. I was apprehensive three years ago, and posted a couple of rants on how awful India was.
I can tell you that since that last rant in February 2005, little has changed in the “Silicon Valley of India”.
I still lose power on average three times a day, for two hours a day, especially since it’s gotten rather hot lately and they’ve started load shedding. (Even though they said Bangalore would be spared, I’m certain it’s no coincidence that power cuts have ramped up since then.) Infrastructure is crumbling (copy for whenever BusinessWeek expires the former link), enough to drive companies like Intel away.
For all its importance, the tech services sector employs just 1.6 million people, and it doesn’t rely on good roads and bridges to get its work done. India needs manufacturing to boom if it is to boost exports and create jobs for the 10 million young people who enter the workforce each year. Suddenly, good infrastructure matters a lot more. Yet industry is hobbled by overcrowded highways where speeds average just 20 miles per hour. Some ports rely on armies of laborers to unload cargo from trucks and lug it onto ships. Across the state of Maharashtra, major cities lose power one day a week to relieve pressure on the grid. In Pune, a city of 4.5 million, it’s lights out every Thursday—forcing factories to maintain expensive backup generators. Government officials were shocked last year when Intel Corp. (INTC) chose Vietnam over India as the site for a new chip assembly plant. Although Intel declined to comment, industry insiders say the reason was largely the lack of reliable power and water in India.
Add up this litany of woes and you understand why India’s exports total less than 1% of global trade, compared with 7% for China. Says Infosys Chairman N.R. Narayana Murthy: “If our infrastructure gets delayed, our economic development, job creation, and foreign investment get delayed. Our economic agenda gets delayed—if not derailed.”
More reading provides some insight into the real India. Someone has looked into the mouth of the beast and discovered its nature. There are positives and negatives, of course. I tend to dwell on the negatives because I didn’t grow up needing spirituality to deal with the godawfulness of this country. (Yes, it’s my belief that all the “spirituality” that people come here to discover within themselves grows out of despair.) And it’s all there—squalor, thuggery, stupidity, avarice—in vast proportions.
Sigh.
I’m applying to various companies abroad. Wish me luck.
