The Dark Underbelly of Bangalore’s Silicon Valley Shrouds the Villages It Turns Soulless

Riding along the beautiful green-lined farms and trees along the main highway on the west coast leading towards Coorg, one tends to drift into a blissful state. The roads are perfect, with a slight drizzle every now and then as the Sun plays ‘Seek Me’ with the clouds. A way-side coffee dhaba is never too far and a bunch of hungry monkeys are always around the corner, hoping you will stop for a bite, so they can get theirs.

But as you swing off the main highway, you begin to see some magnificent mansions, appear occasionally, with large gated compound walls locked and quiet, lonely as if in mourning, quietly witnessing silent devastation: entire villages turning soulless.

I mean, after a few kilometers you want to stop someone and ask why — why are these massive villas crying silently? why is no one living in them? Has everyone gone on holiday? Except that there is no one to ask.

This is India’s version of ghost town formation (akin to Chinese ghost cities). This is a tiny low-impact repercussion of the reckless, breakneck, non-stop growth of a neighboring city — Bangalore. In short, when a city in a radius of 300 kilometers from your green heaven grows at 30% year-on-year for 25 years at a stretch, it sucks the life out of its neighbors -may not be by design or intent, but sucking it does. It turns villages and rural ecosystems soulless. It drains the lifeblood of its residents to feed itself.

When Capitalism Meets Talent:

Kariappa has been a long-time resident of Coorg. Born in Madikeri to his farmer parents, he tended to the coffee estates, purchased smaller land pieces in the neighborhood, and built up a fair holding of about 21 acres. To make sure his kids would not miss out on high-quality education, he sent them both to convent schools in Ooty and Bangalore. The kids grew up, went abroad to study, and settled down in Australia and Bangalore. Now in his 70s, Kariappa is diabetic, lonely, and needs someone to take care of him. Losing his wife to cancer a year ago sapped all enthusiasm for life out of him.

“Roots are not in landscape or a country, or a people, they are inside you.” -Isabel Allende

The kids are sympathetic but having lived much of their lives alienated from coffee plantations, they cannot connect with life in Coorg. They asked him to relocate to Australia. Having lived all his life in the lap of nature, Kariappa can’t spend more than a month in Australia. He considers Bangalore a ‘chaotic hell’.

To make matters worse, he cannot even attend to his coffee business because most workers have fled to neighboring Bangalore, where they take on construction jobs where daily wages are higher. He has not farmed in half his estates for two years now and this year it will go down further.

His neighbour and childhood friend Joseph, sold the house he had recently built at half the price it cost him and joined his daughter in Bangalore. Joseph’s situation is similar, except that his wife died a few years earlier. His ancestral house has been locked for five years now.

A walk through some of the smaller towns in South Canara shows similar signs: thriving villages just twenty years ago are now shorn of young people with most having migrated to work in cities. Older folks have little or no support except to look forward to an occasional weekend when kids drive in with grandchildren for a picnic, catch up on home food, and drive back to hit the school circuit Monday morning.

Migration has unhappiness on both ends:

It is a bit strange that these hard challenging migratory exercises leave people unhappy on both ends of a multi-year effort. The parents are suffering alienation, and loneliness, and feel uncared for. The children who have spent a good ten years of their adult life in their adopted land, (even more if it is a foreign land) to gain higher education, break into a corporate career, marry, and raise a family abroad also have their bowl of unhappiness. They rue the grandkids have missed the culture and value system they grew up in, feel somewhat guilty having left the parents when they need them the most, and feel they don't belong to the country they adopted.

“People have been migrating since time immemorial. Migration is not a crime. It’s a human right.” -Anna Badhken

This is not to say migration is evil — in fact, migration is a necessary aspect of globalization and is inevitable. Talent moves to markets of opportunity and there are no two things about it — be it home or abroad. Migrating to Bangalore from a small village is in a way no different from migrating abroad as it disconnects you from your roots and plants you elsewhere to a new life. In a highly connected world, where a WhatsApp video call is one click away, the impact of alienation is far lesser than it used to be.

Domestic migration within a country is usually triggered by short-term financial gains and not so much in the quest to create a new life. However, millions of workers moving to the same city naturally push the city to its limits as it cracks at its seams. The result is Bangalore’s real estate is far more expensive than most other cities and rentals are beginning to be unaffordable, rising over 30% post-Covid. The city’s water needs are provided for by the Cauvery River piped across 130 km. Already infamous for its mega traffic jams and two-hour commutes, what quality of life are you providing for those who moved in?

Planned decongestion and rerouting of growth to other locations is an essential part of urban planning,

Urban planning needs to be a government priority:

The point here is about government apathy in urban planning. Even after witnessing breakneck growth in cities like Bangalore driven significantly by IT, BT, ITES, and fintech industries, the government did precious little to create a satellite network of other development centers to decongest Bangalore. Building necessary road networks, and airports, and incentivizing investment into IT industries in smaller towns like Mangalore, Udupi, Mysore, Belagavi, and Dharwad early on could have helped take the load off Bangalore and help spread out growth and prosperity.

“A great architect is not made by way of a brain nearly so much as he is made by way of a cultivated, enriched heart.” -Frank Lloyd Wright

Agree that in the last two years, new airports have come up in smaller towns like Mysore and Shivamogga but probably too little too late. Urban planning runs on multi-decade cycles and not in terms of election schedules of 5-year duration.

Data centers — the mining center of the IT industry, broadband pipes -the oil pipes of the data economy should have been planned years ahead, knowing well the coming data boom would redefine economies. The SaaS model, together with mobile broadband, and inexpensive internet, are the right ingredients to create the off-city IT revolution -where young engineers can work from home and stay closer to their home towns.

Covid lockdowns have shown the world how technology can decongest cities, minimize travel, and actually increase productivity in the process. Homebound talent will be retained in villages, enrich both village and city ecosystems, and blend harmonious growth by spreading resources and people over a wider terrain.

Building and maintaining a thriving coffee estate or banana plantation in Madikeri or South Canara does not have to come at the cost of an IT career in a glitzy VC-funded Bangalore startup. Or the other way around. Simple, ubiquitous, and affordable technology shows that they can coexist with little effort. But it needs a strong government push, favorable policies, incentives for startups and MNCs, and marketing and promotion of the message consistently over a decade to get these messages into reality.

“The places that thrive in today’s world are those that build both hard and soft infrastructure while stoking the flames of creativity and innovation.”- Richard Florida

To be fair, @TiE Mangaluru, Robosoft Technologies, 99Games, (Rohith Bhat and team), and a slew of companies have kick-started a Silicon Beach concept to offload and decongest the chaotic urbanization of IT careers. The concept of moving and creating new IT careers in pristine surroundings along the west coast of Karnataka, promising a better quality of life while not missing the challenges and opportunities of a global IT career is apparent. But we need a lot more going to effectively create reverse migration at scale.

It is time we use technology solutions to solve our problems not just the world’s problems. It is possible to have a five to ten-minute commute to work, and back home to spend some quality time with the family, participate in your cultural festivals at the local temple, stay close to nature, and maintain a balanced growth both for yourself and the family.

This is actually happening today as we speak but in tiny pockets of land in select locations. To be able to do this at scale across the country in a sustainable manner would be the reward for a successful policy planned well and implemented in time.

That would also wipe a tear off Cariappa and many thousands of others like him.

Sridhar Pai Tonse writes about life, tech, markets, and startups. He is an expert on Strategy and Lead Generation for startups. Follow him on https://youtube.com/@tonsepai and visit https://tonsepai.com. For more https://tonsetelecom.com.