Does Karnataka Government Lacks Vision/Willingness

Yes, you read correctly only. Couple of days when I was reading the mint paper I got an article. That article was about "how the different cities of different states are contributing to country". So there was the survey based on the market size of different cities. Here is the snap of that article...


You can see that Bangalore is at number 4th position in market size and rest of the south Indian cities are following in the ranking.

But if see that snap carefully, from Tamil Nadu, there are 7 cities, Andhra Pradesh - 4 cities & even Kerala - 2 cities are in top 50 list of the country. This means in all these states not only one city is contributing, but all other cities from different locations in their respective states are contributing. Where as in Karnataka Bangalore is the only city in top 50 ranking. What about the rest of the cities like Mysore, Mangalore, Hubli, Belgaum, Gulbarga & etc which have very good potential to grow.

And if you look at the picture more carefully, you can see that each subsequent ranking cities with their respective states are contributing at least half of what its higher ranking city is contributing. For example in Tamil Nadu, Chennai's market size is Rs. 30586 crore & next Tamil Nadu city, i.e. Coimbatore's market size is Rs. 15056 crore and is same for Andhra Pradesh also, Hyderabad's - Rs. 20860 crore & next ranked city A.P. Rangareddy's - Rs. 10037 crore. But what about Karnataka, here Bangalore's market size is Rs. 41008 crore & next Mangalore might be less than Rs. 4000 crore since its not there in top 50.

This means there is a clear cut message that regional imbalance is much more in Karnataka as compared to other southern states. What might be the reasons for this? May be rapid growth of IT in Bangalore or Lack of vision/willingness of politicians towards the other regions of the state. According to me both are the reasons for this. But same condition applies to A.P. also where Hyderabad is one more Silicon city but other cities are also developed simultaneously.

Even if you keep aside the regional imbalance issue, does Bangalore is in position to develop further or in other words does Bangalore has infrastructure to support this kind market size. Think of Bangalore traffic, roads, flyovers & metro. When I think the metro, I think of Famous Kannada Actor Shankar Nag who thought of metro for Bangalore before 90s i.e. before his accidental death. That's the kind of vision Government needs to have for infrastructure, but Government has now taken the initiative for the metro after 20 years of Mr. Nag's vision.

From last 3-4 years I have discussed with many friends that "Government simultaneously needs to give priority Tier1 & Tier2 cities". Its not only applicable to Karnataka but to all the states & countries. Authorities needs to think of saturation level of major cities & subsequent preparation for other cities.

One may argue that companies dont like to go to other cities than the capital cities of the states. That again depends on State Government's willingness to persuade the companies by giving some facility like subsidized current, water, land & etc offer in other cities. In these "other cities" governemnt can encourage SMEs(Small & Medium Enterprises) to increase the employment & reduce over-dependency on agriculture.


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