Bangalore Diary

Start up fest...

Weekend meet-ups take place quite regularly in Bangalore, home to nearly a third of India's start ups. The volunteers, mentors and people who flock to these — as Sharad Sharma from the think tank iSPIRT put it — are essentially activists thinking about a cause bigger than being the back office of the world. Last week, the bug managed to bring together three of the best-known attributes of Bangalore — young entrepreneurs, IT and science (the venue being the Indian Institute of Science, admittedly a sedate location for the animated talk of the start up ecosystem). For a change, it also had a politician speaking the same language. Not entirely unexpected because Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha is an IIT Delhi alumnus and a former investment fund manager who reckons the buzz in Bangalore is incredible and which, he hopes, will turn into the grassroots movement needed to work on the country's most difficult problems. Indeed, the ambition and the opportunity is huge: iSPIRT (Indian Software Product Industry Round Table) is talking of creating 1,00,000 software product start ups in the next ten years. Quipped T V Mohandas Pai, one of the speakers at the closing talk, "We believe 85 percent of this is going to happen anyway. We just want the government to take a little bit of credit and do a few, small policy changes that are very important." Sinha couldn't help interrupting him: "We might get the credit but you are going to get rich."

And the show stopper

The biggest claps from the crowd, however, went to Babul Supriyo, Minister of State for Urban Development, as he plugged his iPhone into the sound system at the J N Tata Auditorium and sang three of his most popular Bollywood numbers, outfitted in ripped jeans. For an IISc venue used to lectures and subtle humour, this must surely have been unfamiliar territory. That's not to say that science and music haven't met at the IISc before. Think Dr Raja Ramanna's piano recital at the same hall.

Plane speaking

The question mark over Aero India, the biennial air show that Bangalore has been hosting since 1996 has re-surfaced. There has been speculation for several months that the 2017 edition would be shifted to Goa. But Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar had nixed those doubts in February during his press conference at Aero India 2015. There was a space crunch at Air Force Station Yelahanka, he admitted, but nothing that better planning couldn't solve. "I don't believe in the concept that I am from Goa, you shift it to Goa. There's no speculation left, headline lost," he had said, drawing a burst of laughter from journalists. The headlines are back now and some reports say Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has written to the Prime Minister urging him not to shift the event from Bangalore. So, it's all up in the air still.

Poll turnout

Were Bangalore's residents eager to get their thumbs inked or was it another no-show? The city registered a 49.31 per cent voter turnout in elections to the civic body, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) on Saturday. The turnout was better than the previous BBMP election, and managed to hit the halfway mark. But it was lower than the 58 percent polled during the 2013 assembly elections. Like every election, this one too sparked off the discussion on what kept voters away. At one polling station at least, the answer, we're told, was a bit obvious: the location happened to be a cremation ground.