Bangalore, India — Not surprisingly, an average of two overseas companies a week establishes research and development centers in Bangalore. After all, the world's big global software and hardware players — Intel, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, SAP, Texas Instruments, Lucent — are already here and growing. And two of India's biggest and best-known software export firms — Info-sys and Wipro — have headquarters here.

So Bangalore — home to more than 1,000 foreign and Indian information technology firms, according to official statistics — would seem to have its future assured. But rising costs and inadequate infrastructure are tarnishing Bangalore's luster and prompting grumbles from the very industry that spurred the city's renaissance. Already, reports have IBM Corp. auditioning the erstwhile Calcutta, now known as Kolkata, to be the hub of its software and IT services activities in the country.

And while tech companies' Bangalore honeymoon may not be over just yet, signs abound that all is not well and that industry patience is on the wane. The city — once known for tranquility and salubrious climes — has been growing as a tech destination for companies foreign and domestic since the '90s. But now tech-industry top guns are complaining that the state government lacks interest in providing an adequate infrastructure for the city and its residents. Specifically, they have taken aim at perceived shortcomings in mass transit, roads and utilities.

Indeed, when Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry mistakenly referred to Bangalore as a "wired city" early in the campaign, he provoked laughter here, where both electricity and Internet connectivity are in short supply.

Infrastructure bottlenecks are at the core of the fears expressed over Bangalore's future as a tech center. To make matters worse, the new state government promptly hiked taxes on sales of computers significantly but has done little, critics assert, to address the concerns expressed by the software industry.

Wipro, Infosys unhappy
Azim Premji, chairman of Wipro Ltd. and a man not given to public posturing, said his company was looking to expand outside Bangalore and that other states were also potential investment destinations. Premji had earlier expressed unhappiness over what he deemed a lack of proper transportation and roads in the city.

The other symbol of Bangalore's software prowess, Infosys, added to the clamor. "If the city [Bangalore] is ignored and there is no growth taking place, the government will be the loser in the long run," said Nandan Nilekani, CEO of Infosys and chairman of the Bangalore Agenda Task Force, a public-private partnership that suggests improvements for the rapidly growing metropolis. Since its election in May, the new government has ignored the BATF, prompting speculation in some quarters that the public officials are not interested in Bangalore's future.

Given the size and reputation of Wipro and Infosys, the state government met with them and other companies last week to assure them that Bangalore will not be ignored.

Bangalore's roads, like those in most of India's cities, have always been in sorry shape. Then, the very prosperity made possible by the software industry sparked big increases in the number of cars in the city, causing increasingly longer traffic jams. Accommodation is getting costlier, and real estate prices are skyrocketing. Moreover, companies outside the city are luring away engineers to other places, while companies based here are looking to other cities for growth opportunities.

'Drastic steps needed'
How the city will cope with the still-growing software industry remains to be seen. Unless drastic measures are taken, critics insist, the situation is unlikely to improve in any meaningful manner. Infosys, for instance, still wants to know what happened to its petition for allotment of additional land.

Scant attention is being paid to the government's latest assurances that it will do all it can to promote the information technology industry here.

Costs in Bangalore are being pushed up with every passing month: the cost of living; the cost of employing engineers; and the cost of arranging for those workers' transport, since there is no reliable public transportation. Meanwhile, other states in the country have caught on and are positioning themselves to compete for software-development dollars.

Like most problems in this country of a billion people, Bangalore's are man-made. The city's stock may be going up in the eyes of the rest of the world, but Bangalore's residents see only a once-lovely and quiet city growing into an overcrowded, polluted and costly place to live. Ironically, this comes just as the state government is claiming that the city's software engineers now outnumber those in California's Silicon Valley.

Worried about attrition rates in Bangalore, where almost every building complex houses a software development firm, some newer companies are already starting to look at India's other cities — Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata, among others — as alternative locations. What's likely to happen, observers speculate, is that the large companies will continue their existing centers in Bangalore but will base their future growth in other cities.