Bangalore vs Bengalooru

Ever since the Government announced plans to rename Bangalore as Bengalooru (or Bengaluru) last week, there has been a lot of discussion in mainstream media about the pros and cons of it. English newspapers have written mostly about the cons of it. People have expressed their views on both sides of this issue in newspapers, on radio, near office water coolers and at neighborhood addas. I used to have the opinion that any such name change should not be encouraged. I always agreed with the idea that Governments resort to such gimmicks to distract people from the core issues plaguing the city, like development.

However, a few opinions I saw and heard in the last few days have made me re-evaluate my opinion. I was listening to one argument on RadioCity, where a guy said "Yes we know there are problems with Bangalore, Government is not doing enough to improve infrastructure in the city. However, why should that come in the way of renaming our city Bengalooru? What's the connection? After all, Kannadigas have always been calling it Bengalooru all the time". Another argument against renaming Bangalore was that it will lose it's well known name, thus affecting the city's 'brand value'. However, I was reading about such renamings that were done in many countries of the world. Our own Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkota are good examples as well. I don't think any city has suffered a decrease in brand value due to change in name. So why should it affect Bangalore? Hence I think that argument is not valid.

There is one argument against renaming Bangalore that will hold good, though. Our Government will project this as their greatest achievement and forget about doing anything else for the city. Government will spend an exhobirant amount of taxpayer's money in this process. Other cities will quickly ask for name change as well (Mysooru, Mangalooru, etc) and that will start off a chain reaction. So in all this, we the citizens lose a lot.

So I think renaming Bangalore is perfectly fine in principle, but the only real reason to oppose it is our corrupt Governments taking undue advantage of it for their own benefits, wasting a lot of taxpayer's money in the process. Unfortunately this reason will hold true for anything and everything in our country.