Just spent another week in amazing, crazy Bangalore. I naturally compare it to San Francisco, where the political, economic and infrastructural struggles have deep parallels.
You see, one spends a lot of time in traffic in Bangalore, so one has time to think:
You see, one spends a lot of time in traffic in Bangalore, so one has time to think:
1/ Bangaloreans love to hate their traffic. Case in point: we’re moving @Rippling to a new, larger office soon. Site selection is constrained by the fact that many employees will move when the company moves, even if it’s just a few kilometers up the street.
@Rippling 2/ The water table in B’lore has dropped by up to 900 feet (!) in 20 years. Now, businesses (and cartels) truck in water. Towns outside the city earn income by capturing rainwater and selling it. I felt guilty taking a morning shower.
@Rippling 3/ Waste management systems, including trash and sewer, are non-existent or overwhelmed. A beautiful new high-rise WeWork tower stands next to open drainage and open burns. It is jarring.
@Rippling 4/ Tech has created untold wealth in Bangalore. That's good, but the income disparity is extreme. Engineers, paid near-US salaries, work alongside cleaning staff, paid at the poverty line.
(Twitter is a poor place to enumerate the effects of this.)
(Twitter is a poor place to enumerate the effects of this.)
@Rippling 5/ A healthy democracy offers a path forward. But I found many of my Indian friends bemoaning the situation without invoking a political leader who was working toward a solution. This was my most disheartening observation.
@Rippling 6/ Transplanted populations fail to form a sense of ownership over their cities. In Bangalore, as in San Francisco, most tech workers are transplants. We need to foster pride of place in our cities because without it, there will be no political engagement.
@Rippling 7/ And political engagement is the key. We must engage our democracies to solve our problems. It may feel futile, but history suggests it works. And if we don’t engage our democracies, we’ll lose them.
@Rippling 8/ So that’s what I was thinking about while I was stuck in Bangalore traffic. That, and I’m going to try honking like the Bangaloreans when I’m driving through SF. Just to see what happens. 🚙🚙🏍🚗🚙🐄🚗🚙🚙🏍🚗
@Rippling prolly should have tagged #bangaloretraffic in this thread 😂
