Traffic, water shortages, now floods: The slow death of India’s tech hub?

BENGALURU, Sept 15 (Reuters) – Harish Pullanoor spent his weekends in the late 1980s tramping around the marshes and ponds of Yemalur, an area then on the eastern outskirts of the Indian metropolis of Bengaluru, where his cousins ​​would join him and catch small freshwater fish.

In the 1990s, Bengaluru, once a genteel city with gardens, lakes and a cool climate, quickly became India’s answer to Silicon Valley, attracting millions of workers and the regional headquarters of some of the world’s largest IT companies.

The unrestrained expansion came at a price.

Concrete replaced green spaces and construction around the edges of lakes blocked connecting canals, limiting the city’s capacity to absorb and drain water.

Last week, after the city’s heaviest rains in decades, the Yemalur neighborhood was submerged under waist-deep water along with some other parts of Bengaluru, disrupting the southern metropolis’s IT industry and dealing a blow to its reputation.

Residents fed up with heavy traffic and water shortages during the dry season have long complained about the city’s infrastructure.

But flooding during the monsoon has raised new questions about the sustainability of rapid urban development, especially if weather patterns become more erratic and intense due to climate change.

“It’s very, very sad,” said Pullanoor, who was born near Yemalur but now lives in the western city of Mumbai, parts of which also experience sporadic flooding like many of India’s urban centers.

“The trees are gone. The parks are almost gone. There’s chok-a-block traffic.”

Big companies are also complaining about worsening disruptions, which they say can cost them tens of millions of dollars in a single day.

Bengaluru hosts more than 3,500 IT companies and around 79 “tech parks” – high-end premises that house offices and entertainment areas that cater to tech workers.

As they trekked through flooded highways last week, they struggled to reach modern glass-clad complexes in and around Yemalur, where multinational firms including JP Morgan and Deloitte operate alongside large Indian start-ups.

Millionaire entrepreneurs were among those forced to flee flooded living rooms and flooded bedrooms in the back of tractors.

Insurers said initial estimates of property losses ran into millions of rupees, with figures expected to rise over the next few days.

‘GLOBAL IMPACT’

The latest chaos sparked renewed concerns from India’s $194 billion IT services industry, which is centered around the city.

“India is a technology hub for global companies, so any disruption here will have a global impact. Bangalore, being the center of IT, will be no exception to this,” said KS Viswanathan, vice president of the industry lobby group National Association of Software and service companies (NASSCOM).

Bangalore was renamed Bengaluru in 2014.

NASSCOM is currently working to identify 15 new cities that can become software export hubs, said Viswanathan, who runs the project.

“It’s not a city-versus-city story,” he told Reuters. “We as a country do not want to miss out on revenue and business opportunities because of a lack of infrastructure.”

Even before the floods, some business groups, including the Outer Ring Road Companies Association (ORRCA), led by executives from Intel ( INTC.O ), Goldman Sachs, Microsoft ( MSFT.O ) and Wipro ( WIPR.NS ), warned of inadequate infrastructure in Bengaluru could encourage companies to leave.

“We have been talking about these for years,” Krishna Kumar, general manager of ORRCA, said last week about issues related to Bengaluru’s infrastructure. “We’ve come to a serious point now and all companies are on the same page.”

In the early 1970s, more than 68 percent of Bengaluru was covered in vegetation.

By the late 1990s, the city’s green cover had fallen to about 45% and by 2021 to less than 3% of its total area of ​​741 square kilometers, according to an analysis by TV Ramachandra of Bengaluru’s Indian Institute of Science (IISC).

Green spaces can help absorb and temporarily store rainwater, helping to protect built-up areas.

“If this trend continues, by 2025, 98.5% (of the city) will be choked with concrete,” said Ramachandra, who is part of IISC’s Center for Ecological Sciences.

CITY IN CONNECTION

Rapid urban sprawl, often with illegal structures built without permission, has affected Bengaluru’s nearly 200 lakes and a network of canals that once connected them, according to experts.

So when heavy rains lash the city like they did last week, drainage systems are unable to keep up, especially in low-lying areas like Yemalur.

The state government of Karnataka, where Bengaluru is located, said last week it would spend 3 billion Indian rupees ($37.8 million) to help manage the flooding situation, including removing unauthorized developments, improving drainage systems and controlling water levels in lakes.

“All encroachments will be removed without any mercy,” Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai told reporters. “I will personally go and inspect.”

Authorities have identified around 50 areas in Bengaluru that have been illegally developed. These included high-end villas and apartments, according to Tushar Girinath, chief commissioner of the Bengaluru civic authority.

Last week, the state government also announced that it would set up a body to manage Bengaluru’s traffic and start discussions on a new stormwater drainage project along a major highway.

Critics called the initiatives a knee-jerk reaction that could disappear.

“Every time it floods, only then we discuss,” IISC’s Ramachandra said. “Bengaluru is decaying. It will die.”

($1 = 79.4130 Indian Rupees)

Reporting by Devjyot Ghoshal in NEW DELHI and Nivedita Bhattacharjee in BENGALURU, Additional reporting by Nandan Mandayam in BENGALURU; Editing by Mike Collett-White and Raju Gopalakrishnan

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