Mysuru

Before Bangalore became India's Silicon Valley, Mysore was Karnataka's industrial pioneer—and the contrast explains why first-mover advantage does not guarantee permanent dominance. The Kingdom of Mysore, under the progressive Wadiyar dynasty and their chief engineer-statesman M. Visvesvaraya, built Asia's first hydroelectric plant at Shivanasamudra Falls in 1902 and established model factories for silk, sandalwood, iron, and steel. Mysore had electrification, modern industry, and a university (1916) decades before most Indian cities.

The princely state's enlightened governance was real: literacy rates exceeded British India's averages, and the Mysore Iron Works (1923) demonstrated that Indian industry could compete with colonial imports. But when India consolidated its princely states after independence in 1947, Mysore became a state capital briefly before Bangalore absorbed that role. The planned tech ecosystem that V. Visvesvaraya imagined for Mysore materialized instead in Bangalore, 150 kilometers northeast, where defense laboratories and public-sector engineering colleges seeded the IT industry.

Modern Mysuru (officially renamed in 2014) has roughly 868,000 residents and a reputation as India's cleanest city—an award it has won multiple times. The economy blends heritage tourism (Mysore Palace draws over six million visitors annually), traditional industries (silk, sandalwood oil, incense), and a growing IT presence as firms seek alternatives to Bangalore's congestion. Infosys was founded in Mysuru (though it quickly moved to Bangalore), and the company maintains a massive training campus here.

Mysuru illustrates the second-city paradox: proximity to a dominant hub provides spillover benefits but also ensures permanent subordination. Bangalore's gravity captures the ambitious talent that Mysuru's livability attracts. The city that pioneered Karnataka's modernization now markets itself as the pleasant alternative to the megacity its own innovations helped create.