Bangalore has become something of a poster boy of the ‘information age’of late, a city at the centre of the relatively successful Indian IT industry, filled with software companies, call centres and cybercafés; a city populated by the growing and affluent middle classes. Whilst such an image might ignore the great disparities and urban poverty (Benjamin 2000) that accompany Bangalore’s role at the heart of the informational economy (Castells 2000: 436; Sassen 1991: 333; 1998), this is undoubtedly a city undergoing rapid social change. Bangalore is at the forefront of a particular constitution of Indian modernity and middle-class ideals of progress, which is increasingly centred on dreams of IT employment and the highly visible expressions of social mobility that such jobs enable.
Editors
