Long before being rechristened Bengaluroo, this city was called India’s Silicon Valley.
Women techies in Bangalore say less time with family is causing emotional and health problems
BANGALORE: Long before being rechristened Bengaluroo, this city was called India’s Silicon Valley. But, sadly, besides the springing up of software companies, which shot Bangalore to international recognition, there isn’t anything else in the city which can be compared to world standards, especially the infrastructure.
Bangalore’s traffic snarls are affecting personal lives of techies, with women executives complaining of health hazards and emotional strain which in turn is affecting their productivity.
Traffic on the 9-km Hosur Road stretch to the Electronics city moves at a snail's pace with bumper-to-bumper traffic during peak hours. The potholed roads have also led to many a miscarriage. Besides, the women felt that spending hours in travelling to and from their office is robbing them of quality time with their family.
“This time with our little ones is getting lost every day because we spend over four hours on the road commuting back and forth from work,” said Aruna Newton, a working mother.
This has compelled the young mothers to carry their toddlers to crèches nearer to office, thus exposing the children to pollution, which may lead to health problems like asthma. For many, spending time with school going children has become a rarity even after their employers introduced staggered timings to avoid the snail-paced movement of vehicles during peak hours.
The high-paying women techies working at Conzerv, Hewlett Packard, Wipro, Viteos and Infosys on Wednesday urged chief minister HD Kumaraswamy to take steps to improve the roads and remove obstacles for smooth flow of traffic in and out of the city.
“In all my decades of working, I have never seen employee morale at such an all time low,” said NS Rama, one of Karnataka's first women engineers, who finds that the long hours spent on road is affecting the health of the knowledge workers. Nasscom estimates that women account for over 25% of employees in software companies across the country and it is growing significantly. "I am not speaking from the woman’s point of view alone. Even men are getting affected,” Rama said.
Kumaraswamy, who heard their complaints assured of moving things faster on the infrastructure front. “Bangalore has grown dramatically in the last few years with no long-term vision. The infrastructure needs to be developed and we will definitely look into it,” he said.
“The CM has promised to discuss the projects in detail over the next few days,” said IT Secretary MN Vidya Shankar, who will chart out a plan over the next six weeks to ease traffic congestion.
Bumpy ride
Bangalore’s potholed roads and electricity and water shortages have been a cause of concern for about five years
Multinational companies including Intel, Accenture, IBM, and Texas Instruments have set up large facilities in the city. Infosys and Wipro also have their headquarters in the city.
Concerned about India’s deteriorating infrastructure, key IT companies in the city had threatened to boycott Bangalore IT.in, an annual conference and exhibition of the state govt in 2005.
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