Welcome to Bengaluru

As of today, Bangalore no longer exists, after the city's name has been changed to Bengaluru. Nothing major here - India's cities have been changing their names regularly for the last 10 years. Bombay became (shudder) Mumbai, Madras became Chennai and Calcutta became Kolkata. However, while previous name changes represented an anti-colonial backlash, this one has taken place with a view toward tourism. That is, if you believe the Karnataka Home Minister, M P Prakash, who said:

"English people could not pronounce it properly, we want to correct these things. By November 1 such orders will be given and hereafter, it will be known as Bengaluru..."

Now I don't mean to be a wet blanket here, but how exactly will our Western cousins find "Bengaluru" easier to say than "Bangalore"? They're having enough trouble with our first names - let's not burden them with tongue-twisting cities! It was great fun watching them struggle to book tickets to Vishakhapatnam, Thiruvanathapuram and Vadodara (which we still call Baroda when their backs are turned), but the joke's wearing thin now. Can we quit wasting taxpayers' money on such fatuous pursuits and actually invest it back into society? State governments have been so infatuated with their hopelessly rose-tinted notions of pre-colonial India that they seem to think nothing of spending crores of rupees debating and eventually implementing name changes. There's no end in sight either, with Mangalore, Belgaum and others also renamed today.