From Bangalore to Melbourne

My interest in Indian overseas students has its origins in earlier research that I conducted for my MA thesis in 2003. At the time, I was interested in the question of how working in the Indian IT industry of Bangalore (a highly modern and transnational work environment) influences life outside the office and vice versa. For this reason, I had rented an apartment in the HSR-Layout, close to Koramangala, a hip and upcoming neighborhood in Bangalore famous for its numerous IT companies. The complex itself was located on the Outer Ring Road, a very busy and dusty road that led to all sorts of construction sites nearby. At one such site, a fly-over was being built to alleviate the busy traffic coming in and out of the city via Hosur Road. I would often pass by this site, either by auto-rickshaw or on foot, on my way to an interview and notice how the whole project was taking shape everyday. Here, I realized, India was ‘developing’; here it was ‘growing’, ‘happening’. On the corner of the same crossing where the fly-over was being built, Indian computer giant WIPRO had one of its many offices. The company's main campus was located at Electronics City, though, which could be reached from there in about half an hour by auto-rickshaw. Electronics City houses a number of other important IT companies, the most famous being Infosys.