BANGALORE, — Over the years this city, the epicenter of India’s booming technology industry, has increasingly been inflected with traces of America.
Streets that were once bordered by colonial bungalows are now lined with glass-paneled towers bearing the logos of U.S. technology companies. On Road, young tech workers shop for bagels and Philadelphia cream cheese. In the city’s pubs, the talk is about , stock options and Silicon Valley-inspired compensation packages.
The Americanization of Bangalore is a reflection of a more general rapprochement that has taken place in recent years between India and the United States. For much of India’s post-independence history, the two countries were political and cultural antagonists. India was effectively a Soviet ally during the Cold War, and in its economic and public policy it espoused a straitened austerity that was sharply at odds with U.S. materialism.