Model employers and model cities?: Bangalore’s public sector and the rise of the neoliberal city

ABSTRACT

Bangalore is held up as a model for how cities, particularly in the global south, should develop in the globalized information age, in which entrepreneurs with new access to international capital fuel service-sector-driven development. Expanding market forces cultivate cities of skilled middle-class workers whose increased consumption generates broad developmental benefits. Now known as the “Silicon Valley of India,” Bangalore was previously the capital of India’s public sector enterprises (PSEs), which laid important groundwork for the city of today, including the IT sector. I show how, by providing access to homeownership along with high wages and benefits tied to secure employment, Bangalore’s PSEs created the foundation for the city today and its middle-class character. The skilled workforce that PSEs created helped the IT sector emerge in the city. By examining this erased history, we see the role of the state in development projects, and consider alternative models for urban change.

KEYWORDS:

• Development
• public sector
• Bangalore
• capabilities
• neoliberalism

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Erratum

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Gay Seidman, Jane Collins, Erik Olin Wright, and Walker Kahn for guidance and comments on previous drafts. Special thanks to Michael Goldman for extensive support with this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. “Disadvantaged castes” here and below is a shorthand term to refer to the official Government of India designation of scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, and other backward castes.

2. For example, at some defense-related PSEs, companies would shift employee efforts to manufacturing things like hair clips and pressure cookers to maintain employment during times of overproduction of defense materials (Akbar, 1988).

3. “Central” refers to those enterprises under the purview of the national government. The city was also home to many state level public sector enterprises.

4. Despite these positive contributions, cooperative societies also have a significant history of financial corruption (Nair, 2005).

5. This is not to discount that these industries were nonetheless also substantial economic and employment engines in the city.

6. The Indian Institute of Science is the highest ranked Global University in India in 2016, according to the U.S. News and World Report. http://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/indian-institute-of-science-505956, Accessed 8/27/2016.

7. Annapoorna also notes that there was a downside to being a woman in the workforce: “But we had lost so much, you know, by going and working in outside, being a lady, we had not given lot of care to our children. We have left our children under servants and gone. 8 hours we have to be in the factory. So that way my children have lost lot of this whatever they used to get from me.”

8. This was reported as ₹ 565 billion and converted into 2017 US dollars.