This is almost a believe it or not. Land parcels in Kolkata’s IT corridor of Rajarhat cost about Rs 2.20 crores per acre. A developer can acquire land on Bangalore’s outer ring road for less than this price. Infosys has been delaying its planned entry into Kolkata precisely for this reason. Actually anybody would, given that Kolkata is not among the top six (actually eight if one were to break NCR into Delhi, Gurgaon and Noida) IT destinations in India and simply can’t demand the kind of price that the West Bengal government has arbitrarily set. The Communists have never been known for their business literacy and the unreasonable pricing of the government-owned land in Rajarhat amounts to killing the potential golden goose.
To put things in perspective, all of West Bengal employs less than 50,000 IT and BPO professionals which is about an eighth of Bangalore. The Communist dispensation in West Bengal have obviously overestimated Kolkata’s ability to attract large technology companies and it is not likely that they will see reason immediately.
Even on the talent supply side, Kolkata salaries are steaming not due to strong demand but owing to very limited local supply and the general disinclination of talent from other regions to consider migrating to Kolkata. Facilities management companies are ending up paying more to building managers than they would in Bangalore, Pune or Hyderabad. And this is not even a niché talent. It appears that Kolkata’s ability to achieve traction is rather limited. An increasing number of Bengalis are now keener to move out than they were 10 years back as they can sense the snail’s pace progress in the city’s technology industry. The local government is identified more with the trading and builder class than with knowledge workers as the events relating to graphic designer Rizwanur’s mysterious death signal.
The police commissioner’s tactless remarks about the socio-economic “disconnect” between Rizwanur and his wife Priyanka’s family also symbolises the feudal mindset of the government which ironically is ideologically opposed to the upper classes. All in all, Kolkata is not the place to be if one is young with a contemporary vision.
Governance woes
If Bangalore is known for the path breaking corporate governance standards set by visionaries like Narayana Murthy who abdicated his leadership role in Infosys well before the normal retirement age of Indian companies, the reverse is also true of the city. The first family of the state, the Gowdas, played out a fetid drama over the last few weeks with the primary selfish objective of sustaining dynastic rule. As Bangaloreans, we had to hang our heads in shame at the sight of the immoral acrobatics of the megalomaniac former prime minister and his equally morally flexible son. These politicians obviously don’t take a cue from the best sons of their soil. Rather, they have been culpable of trying to choke the technology industry in the state. The impending elections, should they transpire, would provide an opportunity to voters to show the Gowdas where they belong.
Farm to fork falters
After the protests in Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Jharkhand and Orissa, it was Maharashtra’s turn to show a thumb down to large format retail. Two of India’s richest “new money” business groups, the Ambanis and the Mittals, are now pitted against the small traders who once considered these families to be their icons. Maybe there is a lesson in this for these families. They would do well to replicate the e-choupal model of ITC.
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