Bits from Bangalore: Letters from India: Inside the Global Investor Meet

I spent a few hours this afternoon at the Global Investors Meet, with an invitation to attend the breakout session on Education, scheduled for 2:00. This was one of the last sessions, with the closing ceremony to start at 6:30.

I took a printed copy of my invitation from my email, and waved it by the security guards, who didn't take a look at it. I found the registration area, but when I got to the front, they asked to see my invitation, took a business card, and offered me a ticket for lunch, but said that all their registration packets had been given out already, but that I could go in to whatever sessions I wanted.

There were lots of different kinds of police around, the picture below shows my favorite: the green police. I certainly had never seen these before here. They are supposed to help keep things clean. Unfortunately my attempt to find out what they have the power to do was unsuccessful as a result of limited language skills on both sides.

Despite the name, there were very few "global" representatives there. Indian men were plentiful, although there were some women with great saris.

This is a group of men trying to enter the largest of the conference halls. Here is what the inside looked like:

This was the stage. I'm not sure who was up there, but clearly someone important given the swarm of press.

One positive note was that I saw a wide collection of emergency vehicles.

I personally don't see why you need the Chief Minister (equivalent to US Governor more or less) staring at you everywhere, but it seems to be a custom here. And here we have (from left to right) a fire truck, emergency police bus, police van, and the ambulance seen above from a different angle.

You can also see the garland of mango leaves for good luck hanging everywhere.

This was the entrance, and you can see the location on the palace grounds right next to the Bangalore Palace. This set up was built (and lit, and air conditioned) just for this occasion.

This picture doesn't really have the impact I would have liked, but let me explain. I took this at about 3 p.m. The lights are all on. I write this in the night when the lights are coming off and on every few minutes. Yet they made sure the lights were on OUTSIDE during the day, a hot and sunny day.

I did appreciate the lights inside and the air conditioning, but I didn't attend any sessions as the one I was supposed to attend didn't start on time (por supuesto), and then it started with a video in Kannada. So instead I went off to the exhibition. MUCH more interesting. I picked up all kinds of literature, and saw interesting exhibits of lots of government agencies but also some private sector folks.

The Bangalore Development Authority had a lovely display with great posters and little models of some of their overpass projects.

The Bangalore Metro had a mock up of a metro car:

Note all those lights. I was actually happy to get out into the hot air. As I was walking around, I saw three young white kids and heard strong Mexican accents (and vocabulary), so I talked to them. Turned out there were students from the TEC de Monterrey, on a tour around Asia, starting with India. That was the most interesting conversation I had, as most of the others were folks trying to convince me to use their services (electronic design, computer coding, etc.).