Hyderabad or Bengaluru? Or is it a global race?

Recently there was a Twitter dialogue between Telangana Minister KT Rama Rao, Congress leader Shiva Kumar from Karnataka and Basavaraj Bommai, Chief Minister of the State. While KTR was trying to entice firms and industries located at Bengaluru to pack their bags and come to Hyderabad Shiva Kumar promised to give necessary competition to Hyderabad when Congress comes back to power.

Bommai on the other hand refuted the claims of KTR and tried to show Bengaluru is way ahead of Hyderabad in terms of fresh investments and opening of new firms . An important point missed by all these leaders is that it is not a competition between two metros in India but an international competition to attract investment by different countries projecting their metros as growth centres.

The competition is going to be between cities like Dubai, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Saigon and Bangkok along with Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai not to mention of course the more developed the western growth centres like San Francisco, London, New York etc.

Why should an investor choose only Hyderabad and Bengaluru when he has such a wide menu of metros to choose from. Of course, the huge human capital in terms of skilled workforce tilts the scale in favour of Indian cities but that is only software specific.

When it comes to manufacturing an area in which India is trying to get a sizeable share in the world market through the Aatmanirbhar programme of Government of India skilled work force is more wide spread across the globe and India may not have specific advantage in terms of a skilled workforce only in this area .The type of infrastructure and the quality of infrastructure will play a very important and crucial role in attracting investments in this sector.

Unfortunately our urban metros suffer from inadequate investment in infrastructure leading to poor urban services . Unless this improves drastically both Bengaluru and Hyderabad may find it difficult to attract investment in the manufacturing sector.

Solution to the problem is not one of upmanship but sincerely addressing the problems of urban infrastructure not just in these two metros but a number of other metros as well. Even now most of the financial and software companies locate their regional and corporate offices at Singapore while utilising Bangalore and Hyderabad to perform back end financial and software operations.

This will only change when both these state governments take up the challenge of upgrading the urban infrastructure to a level somewhere near what is available in Singapore and Dubai. This needs ploughing back the surplus generated in these metros for upgrading the infrastructure.

Unfortunately, over a period of time we have developed a political culture of bleeding the metros to distribute freebies to build up vote banks and neglect the urban infrastructure. It is something like killing the goose which lays the golden eggs. It doesn't take long for other metros in other countries to catch up with better infrastructure wherever there are visionary leaders. Afterall it is the vision of one man Lee Kuan Yew which transformed a village into a global growth centre Singapore.

Instead of indulging in this one upmanship of scoring a few brownie points better the chief ministers of both the states concentrate on improving the urban services and infrastructure in both the cities. In fact, both together along with the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh should bring pressure on Government of India to develop Hyderabad- Bengaluru industrial corridor with well-defined manufacturing nodes.

The hinterland in between both these metros can provide the momentum for further growth of both these metros with a manufacturing base. Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai together can be a triangle of growth and prosperity. In fact it could have been a rectangle of Hyderabad, Bengaluru ,Chennai, Vizag but the way the two successive chief ministers of Andhra Pradesh have messed up that state and Vizag as a growth centre, it would be a long time before it can catch up with the other three.

(The author is former Chief Secretary, Andhra Pradesh)