Bengaluru-based start-up investor Ritesh Banglani discovered himself on the centre of on-line backlash following a sardonic social media publish in regards to the metropolis’s flooded streets amid heavy rainfall on Tuesday.
“I’m caught in a site visitors jam in the midst of a frigging river. However hey, at the very least the signboards are in Kannada,” Banglani, co-founder of enterprise capital agency Stellaris Enterprise Companions, quipped alongside a photograph from his automobile exhibiting the inundated roads of Bengaluru.
Nevertheless, his humorous take didn’t sit effectively with many customers on X (previously Twitter), who got here down closely upon him for intertwining the Kannada language debate with the town’s ongoing infrastructural woes. One consumer, Abhishek, retorted, “Priorities, bro. As an alternative of protesting for poor infrastructure, some folks right here had been protesting for the language.” One other consumer went additional and even mentioned that Banglani, if he’s so sad with Kannada and individuals who communicate the language, ought to “return to your personal state as an alternative of splashing round totally free on this nation’s rivers after which complaining.”
Unfazed by the criticism, Banglani, nonetheless, responded with a passionate defence of his connection to the town. In an in depth publish on Wednesday, he declared, “I’m as a lot a Bangalorean as you might be and have as a lot proper to this metropolis as you do, together with the precise to criticize the administration. I can personal a home right here, elevate my household, run a enterprise, and vote in elections, however I suppose I can by no means grow to be a ‘native.’”
He additional asserted, “I’m not going anyplace as a result of that is my dwelling as a lot because it’s yours.”
The heavy rains that triggered this alternate have had extreme repercussions throughout Bengaluru, with colleges closed for the second consecutive day and lots of residents working from dwelling. Town skilled its most important rainfall in almost three many years, with components of North Bengaluru hit the toughest. On Monday alone, the area recorded a staggering 186 mm (7.3 inches) of rain, marking the best single-day precipitation since 1997.
As the town grapples with the affect of those downpours, conversations about its infrastructure and governance have gotten more and more pressing.
