Karnataka chief minister H.D. Kumaaraswaamy may well be throwing the baby out with the bath water. On May 2, he announced that it companies will no longer be given land to build new campuses in and around Bangalore. The reason: lack of space and the city's crumbling infrastructure. This might just encourage it companies to accelerate the process of looking at alternative locations. And Bangalore's southern rivals, Hyderabad and Chennai (see The Race Is On), are waiting for just such an opportunity.

"Our facilities are at par with or better than those available in Bangalore or elsewhere in Karnataka," boasts a Tamil Nadu it Ministry official. "Chennai has excellent housing facilities, very good schools and suffers no power cuts," says a senior executive at Cognizant Technologies, which has facilities in the city. Result: companies like Wipro, TCS and Satyam have recently set up large facilities there, and Accenture and Hexaware are planning to follow suit. "And Hyderabad is as competitive as Bangalore on most parameters; and its cost of living is much lower," says Srini Koppulu, Managing Director, Microsoft India Development Centre, which has chosen the city over Bangalore for its next centre.

Infosys, widely considered the gold standard of the Indian it sector, seems to have given up on any fresh expansion plans at its headquarters. It is investing Rs 1,250 crore on a 129-acre campus in Chennai that will eventually house 25,000 techies. Asked to comment on the state of Bangalore's infrastructure, its hr Head and former CFO Mohandas Pai says: "That's not our problem, that's the government's responsibility."

Smaller towns in Karnataka may also emerge as rivals in future-Mangalore, Mysore and Hubli are the most likely challengers. Infosys employs 5,000 engineers at its Mangalore centre and has chosen Mysore for its Rs 617-crore, 315 acre training centre, which will be the largest such centre in Asia. "Costs in Mysore are a third of what they are in Bangalore, it has land aplenty and offers good infrastructure," says an Infosys official. And the proposed Nandi Infrastructure Corridor will cut travel time between the city and Bangalore from nearly three hours to just 70 minutes.

So, has the countdown started? Not quite. Bangalore is still the leading it hotspot in India by several lengths. But it will be fair to say that from here on, it will be on notice.

-Rahul Sachitanand