In today’s international Internet industry, Indian code farmers have always been the backbone that cannot be ignored. Especially those students who graduated from the famous “God school” Indian Institute of Technology have supported the big factories in Silicon Valley.
Behind this “big factory fever”, it is inseparable from the support of India. The Indian government’s investment in the high-tech industry over the years has not only promoted the “two-way travel” between Indian students and Silicon Valley, but also successfully brought the “Asian Silicon Valley” to India.
Bangalore, India’s third largest city, includes almost all branches of popular international high-tech companies: Microsoft, Google, Hewlett-Packard, General Electric…
In addition, Bangalore is the center of higher education in India, with the oldest polytechnic in India, as well as India’s automobile hub, aviation monopoly capital, and electronics manufacturing center. Countless Indian students of technology realize their dreams in Bangalore.
In 2022, the per capita income of the urban area of Bangalore will exceed 540,000 rupees (equivalent to 45,000 yuan), while the per capita income of India in 2022 will be about 150,000 rupees (equivalent to 13,000 yuan). The state of Karnataka, where Bangalore is located, has also benefited from the high-tech industries of Bangalore and has become one of the states with the fastest GDP growth in India.
Behind the prosperity, how did India’s high-tech industry take off? How can Bangalore become the Silicon Valley of Asia?
Lessons learned
In 1947, the Indian Independence Act was passed, and British India was split into two parts: the Indian Dominion and the Pakistani Dominion. The Republic of India was formally established with the promulgation of the Constitution of the Republic in 1950. For the Indian government at the time, it was only by lifting the people out of poverty that they could fundamentally achieve independence and self-government.
Prime Minister Nehru of India at the time, as a nationalist leader who was keen on modern industry, was inspired by the Soviet Union’s industrialization process and proposed to promote India’s economic development through government-led rapid industrialization.
In order to create a foundation for industrialization, the Indian government implemented the first five-year plan with the theme of “development of agriculture” from 1951 to 1956, and at the same time began to build higher education. It was during this period that Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) were established.
With the good foundation of the first five-year plan, the Indian government immediately put forward the second five-year plan (1956-1961), and made public sector development and rapid industrialization as India’s main development goals. Due to the limited resources of the country, and the development of industry requires a lot of resources, the Indian government can only concentrate on developing some cities first. So the question is, where should the industrial zone be built?
During World War II, many once well-developed cities were devastated by wars, and sometimes violent and bloody conflicts occurred due to religious and other reasons, and no longer had the advantage of developing industries.
The most typical example is Calcutta, which once became the headquarters of the East India Company with its excellent port conditions during the British colonial period, and was also the capital of the former British Indian province of Bengal.
However, during World War II, Kolkata was repeatedly invaded by the Japanese army, and its vitality was greatly affected by the 1943 Bengal famine. With the partition of India and Pakistan, the original province of British Bengal was also divided by the Radcliffe Line into the Indian state of West Bengal, where Kolkata is located, and the East Bengal state governed by Pakistan.
Beginning in 1967, the violent movement of Indian left-wing extremists represented by the Naxalites in West Bengal has caused huge damage to the infrastructure in Kolkata and surrounding areas.
During the Bangladesh War of Independence in 1971, Kolkata was overwhelmed by the influx of countless Bangladeshi refugees into Kolkata as it was only 67 kilometers from the border with Bangladesh. This once economic and trade center has been declining day by day, becoming what Gandhi called a “dying city”, and many factories and enterprises have closed or moved out.
With the lessons learned from Kolkata, and for the long-term and stable development of the Indian economy, the Indian government chose to look to the south, which is more secure.
Be richly endowed by nature
Bangalore, located in the middle of Deccan Plateau in South India, has flat terrain, mild climate and rich water resources. During the colonial period, it was the capital of the kingdom of Mysore, one of the British Indian states, and attracted British troops with excellent location advantages. At the same time, it was also the kingdom with the earliest power generation and railway construction.
The British colonists also invested heavily in Bangalore’s infrastructure and set up military factories and mines here. With the help of India’s Nobel Laureate of science and technology, the earliest foundation of Indian Institute of technology was established with the help of Indian science and technology’s father, William thamrah (II), who won the Nobel Prize in 1901.
Good industrial development conditions have prompted Bangalore to catch the fast train of India’s national industrialization. The state government of Mysore, where Bangalore is located, also quickly responded to the call of the national government and established institutions such as urban improvement trust, which is specially responsible for the development planning and infrastructure construction of the capital Bangalore.
In the 1950s, the urban improvement trust took the lead in establishing rajajinagar Industrial Zone in the west of Bangalore. Then the Bangalore Development Committee set off a wave of industrial development in the region.
The development of industry in this area is also inseparable from developed traffic conditions. In 1951, the Indian government promoted the establishment of the Southern Railway region of India, merging the independent railway management agencies among the southern provinces, including the 740 mile railway owned by Mysore state, where Bangalore is located.
Bangalore is located in the center of the highway and railway system in southern India and has become a transportation hub in southern India.
Attracted by educational and job opportunities, countless people flocked to Bangalore, making it the sixth largest city in India in 1961, with a population of more than 1.2 million.
In the following decades, Bangalore’s manufacturing base and urban built-up area expanded from 69 square kilometers in 1949 to 161 square kilometers in 1979. Bangalore’s rapid prosperity through industrial development is thus deeply engraved in the city’s genes.
The 1950s was the “Nehru Era” that has always been remembered by the Indian people. The development of Bangalore has not stopped. The God of luck once again visited Bangalore, but this time the God of luck came from the United States.
After the stagflation crisis from 1969 to 1970, neoliberal economy prevailed in the United States. Many large manufacturing companies in the United States began to think about how to minimize costs and maximize profits.
In the face of the increasingly frequent labor movement of American workers and a number of bills continuously introduced by the government to protect the rights and interests of workers, enterprises have chosen to move relatively cheap and low-tech production departments to overseas developing countries and regions, so as to reduce production costs by employing local cheap workers.
In the vernacular, it’s cheaper to find outsourcing
At the same time, these enterprises take advantage of the defects in the protection of workers’ rights and interests in other countries to establish “sweatshops”. Developing countries have opened their doors to investment and employment opportunities from the United States. India, of course, is also included.
Bangalore, a city with a good industrial base and sufficient labor force, is obviously a business outsourcing destination favored by American companies. Moreover, the time difference between Bangalore and the United States is just 12 hours, which can realize 24-hour uninterrupted transnational production with the United States.
In 1985, with the landing of the first multinational company “Texas Instruments” in Bangalore, more and more multinational companies such as Mercedes Benz, Volvo and General Motors chose to set up branches in Bangalore.
IT rise
In the 1990s, with the development of communication technology and the rapid rise of the IT industry, the practitioners in the outsourcing Department expanded from manufacturing workers to programmers in large factories.
In 1992, in order to seize the development opportunities of the Internet industry, the Indian government proposed to cooperate with the Singapore government to replicate Singapore’s high-quality infrastructure in Bangalore, and establish a technology industrial park based on this.
In 1998, the International Technology Park Bangalore (ITPB) opened in the then suburb of Whitefield, approximately 16 km east of central Bangalore. Since then, the IT industry in Bangalore has taken off. In just over 20 years, there have been more than 67,000 registered IT companies in Bangalore, including well-known companies such as Oracle, Google, and Intel.
This technology park has witnessed the development and changes of India’s IT industry
It is not only a park, but also a projection of the “Indian Dream” in reality
Driven by multinational IT companies, India’s domestic IT industry has also developed rapidly, and established local Indian manufacturers including Wipro, Infosys, and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).
In 2019, Bengaluru already has 16 science and technology parks, and the industry has also expanded from the IT industry to biomedicine, aerospace and other high-tech industries, completing a gorgeous transformation from a traditional industrial city to “Asian Silicon Valley”.
Since 2000, in order to support the development of the IT industry, the Indian government has made great efforts in various aspects, especially focusing on investment in S.T.E.M (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) subject education. Technology and innovation policy and many other related policies.
This triggered the “national IT fever” in India, and Indian civilians regarded admission to science and engineering colleges as an important way to achieve class leap and break free from the shackles of caste.
In 2020, about 6.35 million candidates took the joint main entrance examination of various Indian institutes of technology. However, only 2% of the candidates were able to obtain the qualifications for the subsequent joint entrance examination.
Candidates also have to pass advanced exams to get the pass papers leading to various famous schools. Among them, the most difficult Indian Institute of Technology admits about 13,000 undergraduates each year, with an acceptance rate of about 0.5%.
In the face of such a huge difficulty in admission, India has also blown up the wind of “remedial courses”, and candidates have to take 2-4 years of remedial training before the exam. To this end, India has spawned a huge joint entrance examination training industry, and different gold medal examination coaches and examination academies have emerged in different regions, such as Kota, the famous “Tutoring City” in India.
Candidates have to pay tuition fees ranging from 340,000 to 500,000 rupees in order to take a two-year remedial course here, and at least 150,000 rupees for a year of accommodation. In order to retain the eligibility for the examination, students must also pay the tuition fees of the regular school at the same time.
Huge enrollment pressure and economic pressure have crushed many students, and even led to students committing suicide, but every year, students continue to enter education and training institutions to fight for their future, and the proportion of after-school tutoring for candidates is even as high as 90%.
In general, India’s high-tech industry still faces many problems, and its innovation and manufacturing capabilities still have a considerable gap with the high-tech industry in the United States.
In the global production chain, India is mainly responsible for the R&D and production links in the middle and lower reaches. The top polytechnics in India have always been questioned because of their insufficient scientific research output, and they are often ridiculed as cultivating “reserves” for Silicon Valley. Many students cultivated in India, with work skills, go to the other side of the ocean to find a future.
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