Speed. That evokes a thrill in all of us. But in the Indian governance context, speed needs a massive injection of the thing that powers speed: delivery.

For an investor, that can make a very real difference. Setting up a company in India can be completed within a day or two. But getting from the “I want to invest” phase to the “I am operational” phase can still mean navigating land, construction, environmental, fire, utilities and, above all, bureaucracy. It often involves different departments.

A Karnataka state-commissioned study found that some industrial projects could still take up to 450 days to get off the ground. In Dubai, the government’s Basher platform says a business can be established in as little as 15 minutes. Singapore’s online system similarly allows straightforward companies to be registered in 15 minutes.

Karnataka has been trying to change that through its single-window system and by cutting approval timelines. It is against this backdrop that the governance pitch of Karnataka Chief Minister D K Shivakumar becomes worthy of our attention.

It’s not often that an American diplomat showers praise on an Indian city and its vibrancy. When US Ambassador to India Sergio Gor recently said Bengaluru was “the perfect place to build and deliver”, he was praising something that has been decades in the making.

It is no secret that Bengaluru is a city blessed with extraordinary technological talent, a deep pool of engineers, global companies, start-ups, universities and an ecosystem that has made the city one of the world’s most important technology centres.

In fact, very few people realise that Bengaluru’s technological advantage goes back much further than the current AI boom — or even India’s current semiconductor manufacturing push. Long before India began seriously trying to build a chip-manufacturing ecosystem from 2022 onwards, Bengaluru had already become a global centre for semiconductor design, one of the most crucial parts of the chip-making process.

Texas Instruments set up its India operation in 1985, followed by companies such as Intel, Analog Devices, Synopsys and others. For decades, engineers in the city have been designing chips and semiconductor technologies for products sold around the world. But, alas, they did it largely for global US companies. Indians simply couldn’t afford them. The Karnataka government is now hoping to leverage that home-grown talent pool.

There was another part of the American ambassador’s observation that was perhaps even more interesting.

“Bengaluru doesn’t wait around, and neither does the administration.”

For Shivakumar, that is almost an endorsement of the governance model he is trying to build. It is too early to say........

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