By Fakir Balaji, IANS,
Mysore (Karnataka) : India’s tech hub Bangalore once again lost out in hosting an international event, this time, to its sister city Mysore, the cultural capital of Karnataka.
“Bangalore does not have a good convention centre to hold such an international summit where about 3,000 scientists and students are participating. It is crowded, polluted and has become too commercial,” a top space scientist said here Saturday.
Ironically, Bangalore’s loss is Mysore’s gain, as the sprawling green campus of IT bellwether Infosys Ltd on the outskirts of the city, 150 km from Bangalore, has plenty of “space” and world class facilities host a week-long mega event with lodging and boarding facilities in tow.
“As we have to hold 28 parallel sessions and a host of other conferences simultaneously for so many delegates from 75 countries, there is no city or convention centre in the country that could provide us the space or facilities required as here, ” Physical Research Laboratory Council chairman and former Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman U.R. Rao told IANS here.
When India was selected to hold the 39th biennial Scientific Assembly of the Committee on Space Research (Cospar-2012) after 33 years, the state-run ISRO began to hunt for an ideal venue to host the mega event.
“Even the convention centre in Hyderabad where we held the International Astronautical Congress in September 2007 does not have the required space or facilities to hold so many parallel sessions and other activities,” Rao, who holds the Cospar scientific programme committee chair, recalled.
Spread over 100 acres of sprawling meadows, the Infosys campus has the world’s largest leadership institute and training centre with ultra modern facilities and aesthetics.
The masterfully crafted convention centre in the campus has numerous conference halls, with state-of-the art interiors and spacious seating facilities.
“Over the years for various reasons, Bangalore has been given a miss by many organisations holding MICE (meetings, interventions, conferences and exhibitions) due to its notorious traffic snarls, choc-a-bloc roads, vehicular and noise pollution, high hotel tariffs and logistic overheads,” a space agency official said.
Barring a salubrious climate, Bangalore has lost its charm and calm for hosting international conferences on big scale in the absence of an eco system and conducive atmosphere for serious deliberations .
“In contrast, Mysore is more beautiful, calmer and more peaceful for such contemplative brain-storming sessions,” Rao quipped.
Praising Infosys co-founder N .R. Narayana Murthy and other co-founders of the global software major for creating such an excellent campus with world class facilities, a delegate said governments and organisations conducting MICE events should learn from the IT company how to create such an eco system.
“It is lamentable that what Infosys or one Murthy has created in Mysore, the entire administration in Bangalore could not even in a decade,” the delegate observed.