it's rather telling that a city in Sri Lanka could have a higher Human Development Index when compared to Mumbai, which has standards of living that are amongst the highest in India,'' said Nitai Mehta, managing trustee, Praja.

I wonder where Chennai ranks in India....

I wonder where Chennai ranks in India......

I wonder what ChennaiGUY would say on this

Welcome to India's knowledge capital.

Welcome to south India.

While Chennai competes with New York or Beijing, Lucknow and Patna have become urban hellholes. While Bangalore competes with Singapore and Hong Kong, Jaipur languishes as mofussil town. While Tamil Nadu is now becoming another Germany or France, Madhya Pradesh/Bihar/UP/ are called Bimaru states. While Kerala wins global fame for its healthcare and education achievements, Chattisgarh and Jharkhand languish in Naxalism.

Chennai is the automobile capital of India while Tamil Nadu has become another Malaysia or Thailand. Contrast this with Haryana, whose showpiece city Gurgaon has no roads, no water, power, no sewage and no public transport. Or even Delhi with its 10-hour long power cuts.

It's not just big cities either. Coimbatore has become a huge industrial hub, Tirupur the knitting hub of Asia and Sivakasi the firecrackers hub of India. All this while Dehradun clings on to its handful of schools, Allabad the fading memory of its once-great University and other cities languish in obscurity.

But Vizag has become the biggest port in India, Coimbatore an industrial hub bigger than anything in North India, Mysore is emerging as counterpoint to Bangalore while Kochi is an emerging metropolis in its own right.

That's the paradox in India today. While TN and AP increasingly resemble the Asean nations with Bangalore and Hyderabad global cities, Rajasthan and MP are mired in caste politics. While Kerala is fast becoming a first-world country and Chennai the automobile capital of Asia, UP can only think of building statues.

South India feels and resembles the Asean nations, if not the first-world countries. To go from any other part of the country (including Gujarat/Maharashtra) to south India is too see a whole new model of development. A development founded on the knowledge economy where research laboratories rub shoulders with IT parks, where state of the art hospitals share space with bio-tech parks. Where broad pothole free roads rub shoulders with efficient, honest governance-backed up by an excellent law and order situation.

Now is the time to think bigger-much, much bigger for South India. It's time for the South Indians to benchmark their cities against Bangkok, Singapore, Kaula Lampur, Jakarta, New York, Shanghai and London. Time to leave Mumbai and Delhi way, way behind.

Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad must benchmark and beat global cities. Andhra has to benchmark itself against Thailand, Tamil Nadu against South Korea, Karnataka against Malaysia.

Welcome to South India-the gateway to tomorrow.

But the India today that everyone talks about is the one below the Vindhyas.

Time to start TKSL,TTSL,TTSL and TTML (Test of Kannada, Malayalam, Telugu and Tamil as a second language)

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