Bangalore - A Global City? Virtual Realities and Consumer Identities A research study that unravels the urban experience of Bangalore against the background of its outsourcing boom and corresponding impacts EQUATIONS July 2006 This study explores the socio-cultural issues surrounding the off-shoring of US technology labour to Bangalore (Silicon Valley of India), focusing on its young emerging working sector and their consumerist lifestyles. The purpose of this study is to initiate discussion about a new identity of India that is burgeoning in the urban cities; to look at the flip side of this economic development and the gaping disparities that continue to grow between the have’s and the have not’s. As the representative strong hold of the IT industry, possessing the most number of IT campuses, MNCs and being one of the major Indian metropolises in terms of demography and industry, Bangalore becomes a dynamic example to illustrate the socio-cultural impacts of the outsourcing industry to India. Introduction: Impetus for Research and Methodology Adopted Visitors to urban India will be struck by the overwhelming emergence of a new type of working class, a youth sector that is urbane, educated, professional and cool, casually referred to as the ‘Zippies’ or the Liberalization Children 1. The men and women of this new urban culture are workers of a budding economy created by the outsourcing industry and other service industries such as Banking, Insurance, Finance, Real Estate, Construction, Marketing, Legal, Hospitality and Entertainment. These industries thrive on the disposable incomes earned by those in the outsourcing industry. Driven by multi-national companies (MNCs), this outsourcing industry, which runs the gamut from software development to biotech research and development, to call centres and claims processing, recruit young English speakers (and trains others that are not English proficient), recently graduated or drop-outs from India's universities and technical schools. As a strategy to mitigate costs, MNC’s have developed this outsourcing model to offshore a range of services to India, the largest English speaking population outside the USA, where highly skilled labour is available at low cost 24 hours a day. Quarter of a million young Indians secure jobs as ‘knowledge workers’ in this industry employed by companies such as Microsoft, Dell Inc. and Citigroup. Besides the MNC’s that have set up shop in India, local Indian Fortune 500 companies such as Infosys and Wipro act as agents of outsourcing as well, providing offshore services to international firms. This study will explore the socio-cultural issues surrounding the off-shoring of US technology labour to Bangalore-the Silicon Valley of India, focusing on its young emerging working sector and their consumer practices. By using a variety of anthropological methodologies such as survey’s, interviews and ethnographic fieldwork, the objective of the study has been to analyze some of the socio-cultural impacts of this economic phenomena being lead by forces of globalization. The manifestation of these impacts takes form in Bangalore through the changes in the real estate industry, demography and urban space in the city, consumerism of the youth, and the lifestyle of the urban knowledge professionals in the primary IT city of India. The purpose of this study is to initiate discussion about a new identity of India that is burgeoning in the urban cities; to look at the flip side of this economic development and the gaping disparities that continue to persist between the have’s and the have not’s.; to bring to the forum different perspectives and understanding of this urban anthropology. This paper hopes to initiate debate, discussion and questions about the growth of urban India and its youth population through the lens of Bangalore and its young knowledge professionals. Looking at Bangalore as a “consumption of space as well as a space of consumption”, the study’s objective has been to unravel how and why the ‘global’ economy and culture comprised of the young knowledge professionals in the outsourcing sector exists in parallel, yet consciously alienated from the ‘local’ economy and culture 2. The study begins with the hypothesis that the virtual and placeless nature of work in outsourcing and the global personas that are created for this type of work extend into the living realities of the urban city. The consumption of these lifestyles is an extension of their work and mode of production. Their savvy global consumer identities are representative and maintain “the superior economic value of the global persona” that is required by the type of work they perform, thus making consumption and production intrinsically dependant on one another. While some have never left their home shores, their work takes place in a virtual world transcending international borders, but their social lives remain profoundly localized in India as extensions of the global personas cultivated through their work. As their labour becomes deterritorialized (i.e. irrespective and independent of territorial location) and their consumption becomes 1 reterritorialized (rooted in and impacting their current territorial location), a new ‘hybrid’ culture that is ‘both here and there’ emerges. In order to construct this global identity, the spaces these “knowledge professionals” occupy while they work, live and play have to be set distinctly apart from what is viewed by them as the embarrassing reality of Indian poverty and disempowerment. Global images and icons mushroom in every corner of the urban space (entertainment, food, retail, living environment, leisure options) and the consumption of these symbols becomes a ritual of identity development as global stakeholders. These ivory towers, symbols and spaces of privilege and affluence are constructed to consciously alienate from the other India that reflects poverty, chaos, ignorance, illiteracy, collectivism, sexual segregation, duty, sluggishness and the absence of style” [Saldanha 2000 and my emphasis]. Shopping malls, residential enclaves, serviced apartments, IT parks and IT corridors, five and seven star hotels, glossy chic bars-cafes and luxury eco-tourism locations proliferate within the city and further beyond in the suburbs. These citadels of luxury sit in stark contrast to the dilapidated, congested and overstrained urban systems that are the roads, public transportation systems, public buildings, parks, rivers and air. While the ‘knowledge professional’ elite of the IT industrial sector screen the reality of gritty public life sitting inside air-conditioned coffee shops, office buildings and the tinted glass of imported cars, the local lives in the shadow of the pollution and congestion of a pot-holed overstrained city. Encompassing immaculate Disney Land like work spaces, living spaces without the burden of living in India and play spaces emulating New York chic, this young outsourcing work force lives and works in time to Pacific Standard Time. Living inside the ‘bubble’ with its own time and space, when the clock strikes 11.30, the young are reminded on a Friday night that one still lives in Bangalore and is at the mercy of the Karnataka State nightlife curfew. ‘Americanization’ is recognizably the strongest western influence on the social and personal lives of these young Indians in Bangalore. As IT professionals and call centre agents working 12 hours ahead of US central time in India, their day commences in the middle of the night in step with the American business day. Trained professionally by management companies, these outsourcing workers are taught to Americanize themselves and flatten out their ‘Indianess’ and thick accents, to help serve American clientele. Working at night, call centre agents bear typically American pseudonyms such as Rebecca and John, returning home by day as Bharathi and Saroj. Acquiring culture knowledge about an imagined America through television programs such as Friends and MTV, these youths learn to enunciate and masquerade as an ‘American’. On the weekends, they shop for designer labels at one of Bangalore’s many numerous malls or drink coffee at the café ‘Friends’ in Indiranagar. Another perspective of this study was to investigate how these imagined notions of America become meaningful in their construction of a virtual global- (American?) identity in Bangalore. By studying the political engagements and the exchange of power and meaning between these two cultures, between the global and the local, the empowered and the disenfranchised, the study asks ‘what is the ‘nature’ and ‘validity’ of such a virtual “global” identity and how does it become valuable even beyond their labour needs? It intends to study and interpolate the multiple contradictory spaces and skewed development constructed when forces of globalization and market economy collide. Using what Venkatesh and Firat refer to as ‘Liberatory Postmodernism’3 this study looks at the emancipatory potential of the consumption process, wherein this global culture of Bangalore is “not just the product of science, technology and economic forces but the process of cultural presence that includes aesthetics, language, discourse and practices” 4. Similarly, this conceptual tool of thought and postmodern focus on urban culture allows a more nuanced understanding of the “micropractices of everyday life, discontinuities, pluralities, chaos, instabilities, constant changes, fluidity and paradoxes that better define the human condition” 5. This lens of