ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2005

In association with Development Policy and Practice and the International Development Centre at the Open University

Milton Keynes, UK
7th-9th September 2005

Connecting people and places: challenges and opportunities for development

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7TH 11.15
CHAIR: DAVID WIELD, DEVELOPMENT POLICY AND PRACTICE AND INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT CENTRE, OU

SURVIVING IN THE BOOM-TOWN: BANGALORE AS METAPHOR
Gita Sen, Sir Rata Tata Chair, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore

Much current thinking on development appears to have returned to mid-20th century metaphors of under-development as exclusion and marginalisation. Whether it is places (e.g. Bihar, Burkina Faso) or groups of people (e.g. ethnic minorities, women), development problems are increasingly seen as stemming from a systematic process of being ‘left out’. In a more and more inter-connected world, the losers are defined as those who are not connected, those whom globalisation passes by.

The city of Bangalore in southern India, in its rapid trajectory from pensioners’ paradise to quintessential global boom-town, challenges such perceptions. This paper uses the recent experience of Bangalore to explore the ways in which coping with an economic boom can pose as serious a challenge to development as being stuck in an economic backwater. It draws on this to argue that the problem of creating effective public institutions, strengthening structures for democratic participation and governance, and coping with inequalities run much deeper than inclusion versus marginalisation.

Page last updated: 30 August, 2005