Sustainability, IT sector and Bangalore city

Abstract

The city of Bangalore is known as the silicon valley of India. It is a no brainer that IT companies play a significant role in Bangalore's GDP (as well as Karnataka GDP). Nearly two decades of impressive growth in the sector has changed the face of Bangalore quite literally - the landscape and the population have grown manifold. This unabated growth has put tremendous pressure on the limited and precious resources of Bangalore city - like water, forestry, electricity etc. As natural fallout, the quality of life has been impacted. Whether it s the congestion on roads, the irregular water supply (leave alone the quality of water), unprecedented shrinkage of water bodies, greater socio economic divide, Bangalore has seen it all! This project makes an earnest attempt to qualify and quantify some of the above trends. The inputs have been obtained primarily from secondary research - Research reports, Government databases, Journals etc. We floated a survey among IT professionals to find out the level of sustainability initiatives in their companies, their own perceptions of day to day issues facing Bangalore city and the like. During the project, we have realised that data availability has been a major concern. The reasons have been manifold. For one, there are umpteen government agencies involved in recording various data that were necessary for the project. In some cases, when the needed data was available, it was either obsolete or did not capture the entire trend over the years or it was at a macro level (Karnataka state level as against Bangalore city level). Due to these barriers, it has been difficult for us to quantify some of the observations we have made in this report. We hope the drive by Karnataka Government s Directorate of Economics and Statistics to participate in Indian Strategic Statistical Plan, to centralize Government data (initiated in 2009) will prove a major step forward in this lacuna. We had to make approximations/estimates along the way to show how much of a positive or negative impact IT sector has had on Bangalore. The overall idea has not been to either praise or criticize IT sector for what Bangalore is today. Instead it has been the idea to present the growth of IT sector in Bangalore city and to see if there are any interesting trends that emerge when comparing with issues/challenges/positives that Bangalore city faces. While it might have been ideal to find solutions for many of the topics/issues we raise in this project, due to the paucity of time, the focus has been more on understanding the various aspects of Bangalore city keeping IT sector in mind. Where possible, we have provided recommendations and insights that we gathered during the project on how we can make Bangalore and IT sustainable. During this journey we studied various frameworks proposed by researchers/organizations on sustainability. We also studied the various sustainability initiatives undertaken by major IT companies like Infosys and Wipro. Considering the Linearity issues, given the cost arbitrage advantage waning away, these major companies have taken initiatives in this area to be leading examples for other companies to follow. We believe sustainability has received a critical following in the academic elite but is in a nascent stage in terms of co-ordinated implementation across business, government and society. We are hopeful of seeing a lot of seminal and creative activities happening in this area in the days ahead.