Do a search on India’s startup capital and two cities come up: Bangalore and Delhi. Recently there is some rather unwarranted talk about Delhi pipping Bangalore as the top contender for this position. I would like to submit that this is just plain wrong. Delhi can never equal Bangalore in the startup ecosystem for one simple reason: Delhi’s traffic can never be as bad as Bangalore’s.
I can just see all the Mumbaikars shaking their heads thinking, “You poor child. You ain’t seen traffic till you’ve been on Marine Drive during rush hour.”
Dilliwallahs too can offer sturdy competition. We have more VVIPs than you Bangaloreans, they will say. You have no idea of how our traffic stalls when a minister goes by.
To all these claims, we Bangaloreans will just take another bite of our Maddur Vada and spit-laugh in your faces. Mumbai’s jams are contained to certain locations, Delhi’s to certain times. Bangalore has traffic jams all the time in all locations. Our traffic snarls for no rhyme or reason. Just like Bangalore has spring, summer, monsoon, and winter, all within one day, we have traffic jams all the way from Sarjapur to Yelahanka, from Marathahalli to Whitefield. And that, ladies and gentlemen is our secret sauce for creating unicorns. Yes, you heard me right. We not only have the biggest and the hairiest and the best traffic jams. We embrace them because they contribute to our startup ecosystem. They are the reason we have unicorns, a term coined by Aileen Lee.
How is that, you ask. In response, I quote Steven Spielberg who famously said in a Time magazine cover story, “I dream for a living.”
Imagine the average startup founder sitting in a car in Bangalore. He (or occasionally she) is en route to a meeting and traffic is, as always stalled. So what does he do? He checks his messages, emails, Instagram, and then looks out defeated, to see if the traffic is inching along. Exhausted, he stares at the rain trees all around. Eureka, he gets an idea of how to solve the knotty vendor issue.
It is a well-known fact that the brain needs downtime in order to come up with creative ideas. Newton was semi-napping when he discovered gravity. Archimedes was in a bathtub when he came up with his namesake principle. Bangalore’s traffic provides excellent downtime for entrepreneurs and founders to come up with lifechanging ideas.
More than Delhi, more than any other city in India, Bangalore is a city of ideas. I am not the only person saying this. Worthier folks predate me.
Nandan Nilekani is not sure whether he came up with the idea of calling Bangalore a “city of ideas,” but he is pretty sure he is one of the earliest. “Nehru said it before me,” he admits.
Nehru said a lot more during his address at Bangalore’s Vidhana Soudha in July 1962. But essentially, he called Bangalore, the city of the future.
“Now Bangalore, in many ways, is unlike the other great cities of India,” said our late prime minister. Most of the other great Indian cities were mired in the past, present, and future, but mostly the past. “Bangalore however presented India a picture of the future, because of the concentration of science, technology and industries in the public sector here,” said Nehru.
That remains unchanged even after 60 years. In his speech, Nehru goes on to give advice on how to preserve the forward-thinking nature of one of India’s “most beautiful” cities. All this can be read in M. Fazlul Hasan’s excellent book, “Bangalore through the centuries.”
Nehru saw in Bangalore, the existence of the two major incentives of good life: civic sense and aesthetic consciousness. You can question whether the latter still exists, now that metro construction, potholed roads and horrible traffic have changed the aesthetics of this city. But civic action is still strong. Protests remain pervasive and citizens queue up to safeguard lakes, trees and green spaces.
“In the future, Bangalore may acquire such appellations as “Industrial City,” or “Prosperous City,” or “Thriving City,” said our late prime minister.
Clearly, Nehru was speaking to the gallery with respect to his monikers for Bangalore. There are other cities in India that can vie for the title of being industrial, prosperous, or thriving. But with respect to being an idea city, Bangalore, I would argue is peerless. Which is where Nilekani comes in.
Nilekani’s view is similar but he calls Bangalore a “city of ideas.” He said this when I profiled him for Mint Lounge in 2007 and he repeated it recently.
“Delhi is mired in the past,” he said matter-of-factly. “It was the seat of some seven different empires all of whom wanted to project power. Mumbai, even today, is India’s seat of commerce, finance, and economy. Bangalore lives for tomorrow. It is about ideas and change, partly because the locals are benign and welcoming towards people from all over the world. Bangaloreans, on the whole, are forward-looking people.”
Plus we have our traffic jams to help us ruminate, masticate, digest and deliver on ideas.
Pretty good dark comedy and truth
Old Bengaluru has less traffic jams compared to other areas… Malleswaram Rajajinagar see traffic jam but better than electronic city or krpuram
Interesting Article. Three cheers to Bengaluru traffic then!!
Here it’s double engine govt, Delhi govts are different. Here in the name of double engine govt not doing much to reduce traffic instead just blame game. Traffic jam studies are required by experts and not by politicians, they much think decongestion from end to end of 1 route then others. Now what’s happening is 1 km road is good next half km road is bad hence jam takes place. Example see MG road and Brigade road and compare with vellara junction till Anche palya.
Any place , city or geography should not be built at the expenses of natives!! Bangalore what u feel proud today is actually Bengaluru…least u can do is admit that. We lost lands for SEZ , BDA layouts , Houses for road expansion and metros ,..still we r fighting for jobs with immigrant…huge traffic snarls , high rentals ,…but who cares…ur nepotism made us orphans but still we don’t want to be khalistani, a Nagaland or Kashmir bcaz we r patriots!!
India is a vast country so more places to live.Insted of blaming better to leave. Divorce is the best solution if we can’t live in harmony
The old Bengaluru (or Bangalore) under the British Raj was kept in a way full of gardens. Today, with the heavy traffic of cars, buses and bullock carts, it is no longer easy to cross over to the other side in heavy traffic. One reason I avoid cities. We should build more villages which has less pollution. If you cannot see the Sun or the moon because the skyskrapers hide the sky, then it is not worth living there. Get back to the basics. Be a villager and start sweeping the streets if the residents don’t care about cleanliness. Everyday one should be able to look at the sun with the Surya Mudra in the morning for 10 seconds. without the mudra, you should not see the Sun because it will injure you.
Great ideas, at one place! Interesting article!