India’s 50-billion dollar IT industry, which employs about 1.6 million people and mainly confines to the metro cities, have seen tremendous pace of growth in last 10 years. The country’s economic growth is roaring to touch double-digit growth in coming days. The real estate costs have been doubled in metro cities in the past four years.

IT salaries have been gone up by 18% in last four years. At the same time, infrastructure development failed to keep pace with these growth stories and it resulted in problems such as traffic snarls, and shortages of housing, high cost power and water, low sufficient professional talent in metro cities.

The problems such as soaring costs, talent shortages and overloaded, inadequate infrastructure in big cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bangalore have paved the way to shift the centers of Information and technology growth in smaller cities in the country. Tirunelveli and Trichy, Durgapur and Dankuni are some of such cities that have joined the race to become the next Indian IT destinations.

According to the report, the poor infrastructure in big cities have forced the leading IT companies such as Tata Consultancy, Wipro and HCL to jump in the race to acquire land in other smaller cities in states like Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. The IT companies have said that the industrial and IT growth is being dispersed to the other cities.

Kiran Karnik, president of the National Association of Software and Service Companies, said:

India is currently experiencing a very active dispersal of the industrial growth from the bigger to the small towns and small to even smaller. The flow of development would be accelerated at greater speed once the physical infrastructure in such cities will be in place.

Karnik further said that the current trend of growth would be resulted in creation of employment opportunities in the smaller cities that would stop the migration of people to bigger cities. The smaller cities would taste the economic development across the country.

At the same time, the state governments have also started offering attractive proposals and promising quick land allotments. The governments have even promised these companies to provide a vast pool of engineers, uninterrupted electricity and telecommunication links, good roads air links and quality of living in independent residential townships as well.

Tirunelveli and Trichy have far above than any other cities in the race of becoming the favorite IT destinations in Tamil Nadu. The race of such cities have made state of Tamil Nadu as the as the most preferred IT destination state in the country.

IT parks are being planned in some other cities such as Tirunelveli, Trichy, Coimbatore and Madurai in Tamil Nadu. Tamil nadu is India’s first and single state that generates surplus power in the country. The state government has set apart 2,340 acres of land particularly for the IT industry.

The Communist state, West Bengal, is involved in the race to attract IT companies in the state. The state government is actively promoting cities such as Durgapur, Dakuni, Siliguri and Haldia with a proposal of tax-free special economic zones for IT industry.

Bengal’s IT minister said that about 20 million square feet, currently under construction, would be ready for occupation in the next two years. He said that IT should go to the smaller towns now to make the dream of inclusive growth possible. Now, it would be interesting to see how the state governments would be able to meet the demands of such IT firms in short span of time.