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Showing posts from November, 2006

Bye Bye Bangalore!

Interesting article on renaming the most-talked about city in India, published in NY Times. You Say Bangalore, They Say Bengalooru By SARITHA RAI BANGALORE, India, Nov. 1 — In Boston, San Jose, London or elsewhere, if you were being “Bangalored,” it meant your job was being shipped half a world away to someone who would toil for a tiny fraction of your salary. Even the local politicians had come to resent the global attention. The commercial focus was westernizing Indian culture too quickly for them. So Wednesday, officials in this city changed its name to Bengalooru, the vernacular original, and the sparks are flying. The change is actually part of a trend in India and a sign of its newfound confidence. As the economy blazes ahead at growth rates of more than 8 percent, the local governments in India are trying to shed the country’s colonial names, adopting local language names instead. Bombay is now Mumbai, for instance, and Madras has been quietly renamed Chennai. But turning Bangal