Old Bangaloreans rage against the new IT bratpack, blaming them for all that's gone wrong with the city

The world's most celebrated IT city is now considering that privilege to be a curse. Infosys and Wipro are no longer considered gateways to heaven, but more as roads to hell. When Infosys's Narayana Murthy was charged with showing 'disrespect' to the national anthem, there was a glaring absence of sympathy for the IT czar in the public domain, whereas earlier there would have been a tidal wave of support. Likewise for Wipro, when it was charged by a government panel of encroaching upon Bellandur lake to build its guest house. Another time, when the state government proposed to set up an education training and management institute with the Azim Premji Foundation, there was a letter campaign against it. There is now a perceptible change in the way the public in Bangalore looks at Murthy and Premji, the two most revered symbols of its IT industry—that they're no different from other businessmen who merely make profits for their company and their shareholders.

The question Bangaloreans are increasingly asking is: should we allow a tiny population of IT professionals, who make 'exaggerated' claims about their number and contribution, to control the city? The city's population is well over 60 lakh now, the claim is people who directly benefit out of the IT industry is about 12 to 15 per cent of the population. But, maintains Dr Solly Benjamin, "The formal IT types are over-represented in the way data is counted. There is enough official data to show that the southwest and northwest part of the city constitute the major employment economy, but these areas have less than a third of the infrastructure. The point is that Bangalore is also Sivajinagar, City Market area, Magadi Road and Mysore Road."

Dr Lalitha Kamath of urban policy body Cassum elaborates: "The IT sector accounts for only a small part of the economy and employment. Yet it dominates in terms of media coverage, in preferential government policies, in the imaginations of people as contributing to a world-class city."

So much for the prosecution's case. Prof A.R. Vasavi of the city's National Institute for Advanced Studies sets up a few arguments for the defence of the much-maligned IT janata. "IT people should also be seen as victims of the larger global industry that extorts their labour on the basis of time and cost differences," he says. "In addition, the poor infrastructure and competitive work contexts add pressures to their daily and general work and social lives. Their lives are hard and they're paying for it with high stress levels. The unfortunate part is that despite the anticipated boom, the city continues to lack effective management."

The techies themselves complain—and perhaps with some justification—that the city's shopkeepers and vendors routinely rip them off and overcharge them. Endorsement of this comes from none other than Infosys Foundation chairperson Sudha Murthy who in an autobiographical essay titled 'The IT Divide' recounts a telling episode of how she watched an IT executive wearing a shirt with his company logo being charged 30 per cent more than others for fruit and flowers. When she remonstrated with the vendor, he shot back, "You keep quiet. Can't you see he works for a software company? They can afford any price and don't bargain." It's a typical example of the kind of daily aggravation IT professionals face in Bangalore.

Why, then, are they so misunderstood? Says Subroto Bagchi, coo of MindTree Consulting (see column): "The geeks have failed to communicate. They have remained isolated from the larger social system." Ramesh Ramanathan too agrees that IT people have been sticking to their "insulated communities" both professionally and culturally. "It's very important that they discover the other facets of the city, and make an attempt to get absorbed into it," he says. Should they succeed at this, Adam Russ, hopefully, will have to eat his words.