Getting to work

Until about 5 years ago, Sriperumbudur was a sleepy little town on the way to Bangalore, just outside Chennai. Since then, it has been transformed into a major electronics / telecom manufacturing hub, thanks to Nokia, probably the world's largest phone manufacturer. The Special Economic Zone (SEZ) anchored by Nokia and housing its component suppliers also, provides employment for over 12,000 people. Many of them come from villages over 50 km away from Sriperumbudur, but the buses run by the companies in the SEZ make sure that they arrive on time.

Shift-change time is therefore high traffic time, naturally; here are the early arrivals, coming in for the afternoon shift - they are only the vanguard, maybe just about a tenth of the total workforce that would come in for this shift!