‘Floods and the resultant mess reveal that Bengaluru is not all gloss’ Premium

S.M. Krishna, the flamboyant former Chief Minister of Karnataka credited with sowing the seeds of the tech boom, recalls the transformation of Bengaluru from a ‘pensioners’ paradise’ into the ‘Silicon Valley of India’, and the descent into a messy metropolis, in an interview with The Hindu

S.M. Krishna, the flamboyant former Chief Minister of Karnataka credited with sowing the seeds of the tech boom, recalls the initial years when Bengaluru was evolving from a ‘pensioners’ paradise’ into the ‘Silicon Valley of India’.

In an interview with The Hindu, the 91-year-old talks about those initial years of tech growth that involved a lot of challenges as getting everyone concerned to work together was a tough proposition, especially when no one, at that point, could foresee that Karnataka would once emerge as the tech flag-bearer for the entire county and shine in the global tech arena.

In an exclusive conversation, he also spoke about his passion for reading The Hindu, a ‘Madras newspaper’ his father bought daily to his village home in Somanahalli, how he was glued to its sports pages with elaborate coverage of tennis, and how he became a big fan of tennis stars such as Frank Sedgman, Roy Emerson, Dick Savitt (Richard Savitt) and others, way back in early and mid-1940s.

Excerpts from the interview: