'Bengaluru aspires to join the first world, but...': Sridhar Vembu explains why growth in India's IT capital is killing itself amid flooded streets

Bengaluru, India’s tech capital, aspires to global city status. But every rainfall brings the city to a standstill. Traffic snarls, flooded roads, and crumbling infrastructure have become routine. Behind this is a less visible but pressing crisis—an unstoppable wave of rural migration that stretches the city to its limits.

The reason? As billionaire entrepreneur Sridhar Vembu puts it, “We cannot build great cities when we have a vast rural population desperate to migrate to overcrowded cities with broken and heavily overloaded infrastructure.”

In a deeply reflective post on X, Vembu said, “We cannot build great cities when we have a vast rural population desperate to migrate to overcrowded cities with broken and heavily overloaded infrastructure.” Bengaluru, he noted, “aspires to join the first world” but remains weighed down by a rural crisis that spills into its streets, homes, and overwhelmed services.



Also Read: Bengaluru’s rain crisis: City records heaviest deluge since 2017, leaves five dead, hundreds of homes submerged in IT capital

Migration driven by economic drain

According to Vembu, India’s urban-rural divide isn’t just social—it’s fundamentally economic. Rural areas operate at a trade deficit with urban centres. They sell low-value goods like rice paddy at ₹25 per kilogram while consuming high-value products like smartphones costing ₹1 lakh per kilogram.

He explained, “The urban-rural divide in India arises from this basic economic fact: rural areas run a massive trade deficit vs large urban centres in India.”

This persistent cash drain from villages into cities leaves rural families economically hollowed out. With few local opportunities and poor wages, migration becomes the only viable “internal export” for surplus rural labour.

Bengaluru: A city buckling under its own boom

No city better illustrates this imbalance than Bengaluru. As India’s top exporter of software and business services to the West, it has become the ultimate migration magnet. But success comes at a cost. Burgeoning populations are stretching its roads, drains, and hospitals to the limit.

Vembu didn’t mince words: “The quality of life in Bengaluru depends crucially on how many people we succeed in not sending to Bengaluru from rural India.” Without a shift in rural economics, he warned, the city risks collapse.

From paddy fields to packed hospitals

The human toll of this imbalance is harsh. Farmers and rural workers earn barely ₹50 an hour, yet when illness strikes, they face city hospitals charging ₹1,000 per hour for doctors, not to mention transport and medicine costs.

“We struggle to make ₹50 an hour and when we fall sick, we have to pay the doctor ₹1000 an hour and pay for the transport and pay for medicines,” Vembu wrote.

Even women rolling beedis in remote districts like Tenkasi and Tirunelveli—where 3 to 5 lakh women earn a living this way—end up buying Chinese-made goods. These goods are produced by labourers abroad who earn far more, deepening India’s economic inequality. “This would be totally unsustainable but our services exports to the West help partially balance our external account,” he said.

Also Read: Weather today: Pune, Mumbai, Guwahati join the list of rain-battered cities as Gujarat braces for showers this week

The cash transfer trap

India’s reliance on cash transfer schemes is not lost on Vembu. He understands their political necessity, having witnessed rural poverty firsthand. “This is not a rant against politicians. My rural life has exposed me to the complexity of India and how our politics reflects it,” he said.

But this model is unsustainable in the long run. He argued that rural areas must not remain dependent on welfare while urban centres shoulder the economic engine of the country. “I cannot think of a way to win without offering cash transfer,” he added. Still, he’s clear: real empowerment lies in productive, local work.

A call for rural manufacturing

Vembu’s solution is bold and urgent: a rural manufacturing revolution. Building factories, creating jobs, and fostering high-value production in villages would ease urban pressure, reduce poverty, and rebalance India’s internal economy.

He summed it up clearly: “We need an urgent rural manufacturing revolution to save Bengaluru.”

Who is Sridhar Vembu?

Sridhar Vembu, born in 1968, is the founder of Zoho Corporation, a global software giant known for its cloud-based products. As of 2024, Forbes ranked him as India’s 39th richest person with a net worth of $5.85 billion.

Awarded the Padma Shri in 2021, Vembu is widely respected not just for his business success, but for living his principles. He moved to a rural village in Tamil Nadu and built a tech centre from scratch—showing that world-class technology can emerge from remote corners of India.

The Vembu family also featured on Forbes’ 2024 list of India’s richest families, ranking 51st with a combined net worth of $5.8 billion.