However, the number of poor people living in Chennai compared with Bengaluru is greater, they constitute 18.53 per cent of the city economy, as compared with 15 per cent in Bengaluru. The smaller number in Chennai could be the result of underreporting, a variable over which the researcher has no direct control. Based on discussions with the Tamil Nadu Directorate of Economics and Statistics a possible explanation for this is that in Chennai, most of the manufacturing that contributes to the city’s GDP is beyond the city corporation boundaries, while in Bengaluru, the high contributors to the city’s GDP, the IT industries, are located very within the city boundaries. This could be partly due to the fact that the government of Tamil Nadu is quite generous as far as worker salaries are concerned.