India
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Sanyal links Kolkata talent flight to Bengaluru IT rise
Livemint··31 Aug
Economist Sanjeev Sanyal said Bengaluru's rise as India's technology capital was linked to talent leaving Kolkata. On a podcast with Abhijit Majumder, he recalled a Kolkata strike against IBM mainframes. He said that when he was born in 1970, Kolkata was still India's biggest economic hub. Sanyal serves on the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister.
Prism
What It Means For You
- His remarks frame eastern India's growth gap as missing a fast-growing urban hub.
- He said Kolkata still has metropolitan infrastructure and legacy institutions despite decades of decline.
- Listeners comparing city tech histories now have his IBM-strike anecdote on the record.
What's Happening
- Sanyal argued many early information technology activities were based in Kolkata and later undermined.
- He named Jyoti Basu in a pointed remark about talent leaving for Bengaluru.
- He contrasted southern hubs Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai with the absence of similar eastern centres.
What Period He Referenced
- Jyoti Basu was West Bengal chief minister from 1977 to 2000 under the Left Front.
- Sanyal said eastern India lags on social and economic indicators in an east-west pattern.
- He pointed to Mumbai, Pune and Ahmedabad as western growth counterparts.
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