WHEN ONE CITY IS PITTED AGAINST ANOTHER

Cities that aspire to house global businesses must not only sound global, but look global as well. There is no point in cutting our IT-nose to spite our IT-face

- HARISH BIJOOR

THE week gone by has seen a battle of wits (and tweets as well) between one city and another. Bengaluru, a city which has emerged to be the lead global outsourcing hub of the world in terms of the IT and BPM industry, has had tweet attacks of its own. K T Rama Rao, the ever-effusive IT Minister of Telangana, started it all with a quick-repartee invite to a complainant on Twitter who spoke about every woe the roads and hard-infrastructure of Bengaluru brings to its residents and startups. KTR invited startups to come to Hyderabad and erase every woe in a jiffy. I would have done it if I were KTR.

And this started a battle of words between political personas and ‘city passionistas’ equally. Bengaluru boasted its size and flaunted its IT-six-pack, and Hyderabad spoke of its ease-of-living and ease-of-commuting as well. Chennai pitched in a wee bit late to join the party and repartee of words. At the end of it all, what started as a comparison of the hardware of a city went on to compare the software ethos as well, with the ‘IT-man’, ‘political-man’ and ‘agenda-driven man’ of every kind, fishing in troubled waters of community versus-community issues that seem to dog Karnataka now and then. Like every other debate, even this one landed up in the chaos of the political dustbin.

The week gone by therefore ended with the top three IT-centric cities of Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai flaunting their competitive musculature for all to see, discuss and debate. Bengaluru rose to the occasion, with its CM Basavaraj Bommai putting up a spirited defence for the city, even promising the best of roads to fall into place by the month of May 2022.