Chennai is the new Detroit

Last year, when I was in Madras, er, Chennai, to escape from the heat and humidity, we went to a nearby up and coming hill resort, Yelagiri.  Everything on the way to Yelagiri was educational to me.  The new highway without cattle in the middle, speeding at 70 miles an hour while I was the only one of seven people wearing a seat belt, and the wonderfully pleasant temperature of Yelagiri.  But, what was absolutely shocking--a pleasant one--was how much new manufacturing units were in place all along for quite a while.  As dad often mentioned, "all Western-style factories."  Indeed--sleek factories, and most of them foreign-owned.  Including car factories.
 
Which is why this Wall Street Journal report that Chennai is the new Detroit does not surprise me at all (ht).  In fact, I would venture that Chennai seems to have all the right ingredients for one massive economic take-off: it is already a major IT centre, with a long tradition of highly reputed colleges and universities, and relatively well-connected transport infrastructure.

The effect of such transformation is evident in this quote from that piece:

A sprawling amusement park across the street from the Hyundai factory, a French bakery, evangelical Korean churches and Japanese grocery stores have popped up in recent years.
"The city has really changed," said R. Sethuraman, the Chennai-based senior vice president of finance and corporate affairs at Hyundai's India unit. "We used to only have South Indian food."  

Despite all this, I would bet that Chennai will continue to maintain its flavor; i.e., there is no way it will begin to look like yet another modern city.  Deep down, there is a great deal of traditions, and this might just about become a role-model for integrating the old and the new.  Good for Chennai; after all, without traditions, ... our lives will be as shaky as a fiddler on the roof ...