Bangalore: Driving India’s Great Divide

South India's largest city, Bangalore (Bengaluru) is driving development across the country.
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Script:
The largest city in South India is known as the country’s “Silicon Valley,” and is crucial to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s plans for rapid technological development through the 2020s. But despite a decade of rule, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party - or BJP - still struggles to win over this vital region. With India’s national election - the largest in history - happening now, let’s take a quick look at some data to better understand this country of 1.4 billion.

Situated on the massive Deccan Plateau at an average elevation 900 meters above sea level, the city known as Bengalūru in its official language, Kannada, has a metropolitan population of 15 million. It is the capital of Karnataka, one of five states in South India, a region that includes two other megacities: Chennai and Hyderabad.

Bangalore’s modern story dates to when the old town surrounding its nearly 600 year-old fort began merging with the British Cantonment into one metropolis, around the time the Indian Institute of Science was founded, sparking the city’s transformation into an innovation hub.

This brings talented scientists, engineers, and business leaders to the southern region, whose companies also benefit from the many ports along its vast coastline. Its five states now account for 20% of India’s total population, but 31% of its Gross Domestic Product, driven by its IT sector [which makes up 66% of the national total]; electronic goods exports [45%] and [nearly 80%] the latest sector sweeping India: Global Capability Centers–where teams of engineers, lawyers, designers perform specialized tasks for multinational corporations.

Together, these sectors have pushed Gross State Domestic Product per person across the South to $3,176 USD a year. That’s more than double the $1,400 ($1,411) across the national capital and nearby states that make up the North Central Culture Zone.

Comparing individual state figures reveals that much of the South is at least three times as prosperous as the two most popular states in India, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

Only 3.2% of the population in the South lives below the poverty line, whereas 16.8% do in the North Central Zone.

For context, many of these state-to-state differences are on par with gaps between countries in Europe and Africa, and they are mirrored in India’s complex politics. In the last national election in 2019, Prime Minister Modi’s BJP and its coalition dominated the North, but struggled mightily in the South, where they do not currently control any of its state legislatures. This is partly due to a central tenet of the BJP ideology: heavy promotion of Hinduism.

Given that the percentage of Hindu followers is about the same across Northern and Southern states, with the exception of places like Kerala, this seems like it would be a winning strategy everywhere, indicates that Hinduism is less central to people’s identities there. For example, Hindi is the official language in every state in the North Central Culture Zone, but not in any of the five states of the South.