Fed up with collapsing infrastructure, Bangalore's affluent IT workers are getting involved in political campaigns for the first time – leaving the city divided about its future

The Infosys campus in Bangalore's Electronic City has the feel of an enormous and wealthy college. Photograph: Bloomberg via Getty Images

The Bangalore campus of Infosys is 80 acres of landscaped grounds, water features, angular concrete structures and reflective glass. Around 30,000 people work here. Outside the gates on a Friday evening, young men and women emerge on motorbikes or in cars, or wait for buses. It's like being outside an enormous college: many have laptop bags on their backs, and everyone has an ID card on a lanyard around their neck.

Infosys is an electric-fenced oasis – one of around 300 tech companies located in Electronic City, some 25km south-east of Bangalore's centre. The area, with tree-lined roads and an abundance of smart office buildings, is in turn a relative oasis amidst the grey-and-brown blur of flyover and construction that leads up to it.

Conspicuous here are the security forces carrying automatic rifles and wearing camouflage-patterned, bullet-proof vests, riding grimly around in open-topped jeeps. Electronic City has restaurants, colleges, apartments and shared student-style digs for people working here, but it remains predominantly a workspace.

Part of Bangalore's recent expansion to the south-east is Koramangala, between Electronic City and the city's centre. Only 20 years ago this was a green, sparsely built area that old-time Bangaloreans considered forbiddingly distant. It's now a thriving commercial centre with tech companies, malls, restaurants, pubs and brand showrooms. In the evening, buildings along Koramangala's first main road glow with signage.

Prost – one of half-a-dozen microbreweries to have opened in the city in the last few years – is a dimly lit place with interiors themed around taps, metal tubes, valves, chains and a profusion of exhaust fans. This evening its four levels of seating are packed full. Widescreen TVs show the T-20 cricket world cup match that India is playing. A couple who look like they're on a date have their laptops resting against the base of their high stools. At another table, four middle-aged men in Friday shirts – checks or bold stripes – are in a serious conversation shouted above the music. There's a lull, and one of their voices breaks out: "There are certain things God has created. We must be content with them."

Identity crisis

Bangalore has always been willing to make room for outsiders. Beginning as a 16th-century fort and market town, it has absorbed a British cantonment, migrants, and a host of technical and industrial facilities in the 20th century to arrive at its present shape. However, an overwhelming influx in the last two decades has left Bangalore grappling with the question of just whose city it is.

Some years ago, a magazine article about old Bangalore's resentment of the IT crowd recounted how a group of five workers were abused and beaten up as they took a stroll after dinner. The assailants didn't rob them, but in what seems like a telling scene from a film, kept repeating “You IT guys” as they attacked them.

Those who moved here with the IT boom are seen by older residents as insulated from the city by their affluence, only serving to congest roads and neighbourhoods, contend for limited resources and drive up prices. In turn, the new arrivals are disappointed by a rudderless city with collapsing infrastructure....Continue Reading

> via The Guardian