Bangalore to Bengaluru?
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Living in Germany, not a day passes without mainly china and most times India being talked about. Roaring economy and discussions about the distinctions in weather, culture and language invariably takes the front seat when it comes to India. China with its amazingly fast infrastructure development and an attractive market cannot be compared evenly to India, a country with its all well known bureaucracy and crumbling infrastructure even in the best of our branded city like Bangalore. Bangalore is a brand and brand means value. It's too far away for my understanding, how people even think of killing this fat brand by thinking of renaming Bangalore to Bengaluru.
Rechristening Madras to Chennai and Bombay to Mumbai, our politicians have been killing the brands as a regular endeavor. But, should renaming Bangalore be perceived as just another renaming endeavor? Or it means more, not just to the city but to the nation as a whole?
When I got a chance to meet the chancellor of the University where I did my Bachelors just after his short term course at Harvard, he was surprised that Bangalore is so well known among his fellow participants than even Delhi and Mumbai. This was more than a year before and lots changed since then. Obviously, since then many more countries and many more people have been exposed to the brand that’s Bangalore. Imagine, New York and London is not called so anymore. Would you recognize them? Would you have the same passion for the renamed cities that you feel for them now? How many years of tireless brand building took these majestic names to be established as a brand in many hearts of this world? If renaming New York or London sounds a distant possibility, how renaming Bangalore could just be a reality. How do we even dare to kill our golden goose that’s Bangalore and surprisingly there is not much of an uproar in a land where a German woman being apparently raped makes the main headline in the largest selling Indian news paper, TOI. Where are all the journalists and where are all the business tycoons who should be more concerned than anyone else.
The brand Bangalore was not built by the politicians. Many software engineers added thousands of lines of code from the city which ultimately made it valuable and these engineers have flocked Bangalore from all over the nation. The best thing the politicians did, they were off the scene. Also, the contribution of the various Indian and multi national companies for building this brand cannot be belittled. The politicians of Karnataka could not even keep pace of the infrastructure development with the city's growth. If you cant help don’t hinder. Hopefully before it’s too late, the private companies, people and the government rescues Bangalore’s from its infrastructure woes. The politicians would also do a lot well if they keep their hands off anything that’s detrimental to the development of the city. This issue should be immediately sorted out at the highest levels, so as not to create any confusion in the minds of investors and hundreds of hearts thats being exposed to this brand that's Bangalore.
Posted byPraveen J at 8:18 PM
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