Our Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar, speaking at the World Economic Forum, Davos, said Bengaluru was the “city of the future,” with a strong ecosystem, skilled human resources and investor-friendly governance. But…

If Karnataka is truly a heaven for industry, why has the State converted only about 15 percent of the investment proposals it has received since 2013?

This is not a minor administrative hiccup. It is a structural failure.

Just two months ago, the State’s Industries Minister M.B. Patil declared that Karnataka must move from “ease of doing business” to “speed of doing business.” The statement is tragic because it is not a priority for our leaders.

When Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Deputy CM Shivakumar spent an entire day loitering at the Mysore Airport to receive their leader Rahul Gandhi, reportedly to discuss their personal “CM chair business,” while the German Chancellor is visiting Karnataka, home to a major German company like Bosch, we should stop pretending we are serious about competing with aggressive, focused States like Andhra Pradesh or long-established manufacturing powerhouses like Tamil Nadu.

The top leaders should have been there; it would have helped our cause, considering M.B. Patil had engaged in several high-level meetings with representatives from the German State of Bavaria throughout 2024 and 2025 to strengthen economic, technological and industrial relations. The absence of the top leaders is a disservice to Patil’s efforts.

Such behaviour of our top leaders doesn’t merely slow investment, it repels it. This brings us to the astonishing tweet put out by the Karnataka Congress after Andhra Pradesh secured a $15 billion Google investment. The party chose defensiveness over introspection and arrogance over accountability.

Critics were dismissed as “WhatsApp graduates” who “bark before they think.” Andhra Pradesh, the tweet claimed, did not win Google through merit but by “luring” it with incentives such as free power, cheap land and tax reimbursements.

Let’s pause here. Barking is precisely what watchdogs are supposed to do when the owner is asleep and the neighbour is stealing fruit from the garden.

And yes, Governments lure companies. That is not corruption. It is an economic strategy.

Here lies the hypocrisy. When the Karnataka Government “lures” voters with expensive welfare schemes which has left the State drowning in debt, it is hailed as compassionate governance. But when another State offers incentives that generate jobs, long-term tax revenue and an industrial ecosystem, it is suddenly unethical?

This selective morality is not just naive but also dishonest.

It is worth remembering that Karnataka itself became an IT powerhouse precisely because earlier Governments offered incentives such as land, power and policy support to attract technology companies.

Those decisions transformed Bengaluru into not just India’s tech capital, but Asia’s Silicon Valley. Millions of jobs were created. State revenues swelled. The benefits compounded over decades.

That history appears to have been conveniently forgotten.

Now, about the tweet’s chest- thumping conclusion: “We don’t beg, plead or coerce investment… We are India’s No.1 State in FDI.”  Yes, we are, but that was last year. This year may be different.

A recent Bank of Baroda report about proposed investments shows that Andhra Pradesh secured 25.3 percent of total investment commitments in India during the first three quarters of FY 2025-26. Karnataka’s share is a mere 2.1 percent.

So, while Karnataka tweets, Andhra Pradesh builds. While Karnataka debates “speed of doing business,” Andhra Pradesh has institutionalised it.

Under its Speed of Doing Business (SDB) framework, Andhra Pradesh has reduced the entire investment cycle to under twelve months !

The framework rests on five pillars: Direct access, competitive incentives, infrastructure readiness, policy flexibility and relentless Government coordination. It is not theoretical. It’s implemented like in the case of Google.

 Andhra’s IT Minister flew to San Francisco in August 2024, persuaded Google executives to visit Visakhapatnam in October, personally received them at the airport, showcased the State’s offerings and closed a deal.

Not only did they bag the Google deal, they even managed to increase the investment commitment from $10 billion (Rs. 85,000 crore) to $15 billion (Rs. 1.34 lakh crore) !

Meanwhile, Karnataka’s top leadership is busy waiting at an airport, unfortunately, not for investors.

The pattern repeats elsewhere. When Cognizant baulked at land costs, Andhra offered land at Re.1 per acre, drawing predictable outrage but securing long-term economic gain.

The logic is simple: Land discounts are not charity. They are a leverage. As Andhra’s Minister Nara Lokesh put it, “We are offering land at a substantive discount, which will create more economic value. For every job we create, it in turn creates four to five indirect jobs; that ripple effect has a massive impact on the economy.”

Contrast this with Karnataka, where a few companies in Mysuru supplying niche components to ISRO and Europe’s chip industry struggle to obtain a mere 20,000 square feet in an otherwise empty industrial area because land has been cornered by political cronies and land sharks who rent it out.

This is not a policy failure. This is an indication of the slow rot of Karnataka. How long can we use the traction of just our talent pool and the weather to attract investment? Because…

The Industries Minister can only do so much in a system riddled with overlapping authorities, leadership uncertainty, delayed land allotments, dynastic politicians with ambition but no vision, Bengaluru-centric mindset, lack of infrastructure, lack of plans for creation of new cities, labour issues and all this while our State debt balloons.

The race for economic development and FDI is afoot and it’s aggressive. You know it’s aggressive when even a Communist Kerala Government takes a “pro-industry” stance!

If Karnataka, once the undisputed leader, does not fix itself, it may soon resemble a man past his prime, endlessly reminiscing about former glory as the race moves on without him. And that should worry us all.

Maybe it’s time to look beyond Bengaluru and develop other cities with long-term vision, from metro to water. Cities that are environmentally sustainable yet prosperous, truly smart cities, or else we will lose the race.

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