McMansions in Bangalore powered by the Indian tech boom may now be topping the $200K mark. That’s ~$600K, adjusted for buying power. According to a woman from Portland now working in Bangalore:
… we went to visit two of my colleague’s new homes that are being built… I was shocked to see the model of the contemporary home; it looked like it came straight out of San Diego, Rancho Cucamonga area. It resembled a typical Southern California cookie cutter home. I was amazed to see that here. Those homes cost [Rs.] 1 crore… I cannot wait to see this place 10 year from now.
Bangalore is aping SoCal now? I’ve got some new tunes in my woofers. Bangalifornia… knows how to party. Just hit the east side of the IIT, on a mission tryin’ to find Mr. Varun-ji. Regulators! Stand down.
The NYT had more last year:
Snigdha Dhar sat in the echoing emptiness of her new home, her husband off at work, her 7-year-old son prattling on about Pizza Hut. The weather outside was California balmy. Children rode bicycles on wide smooth streets. Construction workers toiled on more villas like hers - white paint, red roofs, green lawns - and the community center’s three pools…
According to a cousin in Bombay, this is pretty much the stereotypes of returned NRI’s in India:
Their communities are secure and closed off, immune from the water shortages and power cuts that plague this city of 6.5 million people. Their children attend private schools, often Western-flavored “international” ones.
Some of the returnees earn their keep in innovative ways:
A radiologist… he proved to Yale that he could accurately read CT scans and other images transmitted via broadband to India… he spends his days reading images for the emergency room nightshifts of about 40 American hospitals, compensating for the shortfall of nighttime radiologists in the United States, and being compensated at near-American salary levels… at least two more Indian-born radiologists are moving back from the United States to work with them.
And they volunteer in ways simultaneously arrogant and helpful:
… he began developing an “e-government” software platform that uses digital mapping to permit far more accurate property tax assessments and collection… In Bangalore, the system has already brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional property tax revenue and has reduced corruption. The Delhi Municipal Corporation - the world’s second-largest municipality after Tokyo - will test it soon…Mr. Ramanathan [a former i-banker] made himself an expert in public finance, and spent two years reforming Bangalore’s chaotic financial management system, now ranked among the world’s best.
Previous post on Bangalore’s boom here.
