Torn in two: the tale of two Bangalore s; competing discourses of globalization and localization in India s information city

Abstract

In the 1980s, the city of Bangalore was shaken from a slumberous existence into a startled realization of its new-found destiny as a metropolis and the 'city of the future'. In the five decades since Independence, this small and unremarkable town metamorphosed into an internationally known boom town, overtook Mysore as the urbs prima of the Karnataka region, and outdistanced its neighbours in Chennai and Hyderabad. No other contemporary Indian city allows us to track the passage from small town to metropolitan status within a few decades as well as does Bangalore (Nair J., 2005). This paper draws upon three different streams of urban literature. The first relates to specific Studies on the city of Bangalore. Nilekeni (2008) laments that the city never captured the Indian imagination in the way the village did, and Bangalore too has suffered from the general neglect of urban studies. There are studies which converge into more recent literature in Bangalore's rise to the status of a metropolis. Its internationally acknowledged status as the premier centre of information technology, IT enabled service industries, and biotechnology industries, attracted the attention of a range of scholars (HEITZMAN, 2006) (Harikrishnan and Mahendra, 2008) (Heitzman, 1999) (Nair J. , 2005) (Sastry, 2008) (Nilekani, 2008) (Yahya, 1-21). A third group of literature places Bangalore in the context of global changes and their impact on the urban firmament. These three groups of literature coalesce to inform this paper and provide it with a nesting place. In order to augment this optimistic perspective with a more sceptical point of view, this paper focuses on the risks and negative effects of globalisation on the metropolitan social map. The central objective is to analyse the interrelations between globalisation, metropolitan restructuring and the capabilities of the most vulnerable urban dwellers to secure their livelihoods in a sustainable manner.