Jyothi, exactly what is your idea of leading a respectable life? If one can subsist without having to beg, that is considered leading a respectable life?

By the way, have you had a chance to walk around construction sites in Bangalore and talk to the workers? I can't claim that I'm an expert in those matters; but here are some observations:

These workers earn more than $2 a day. But they don't have a proper roof over their heads. IMO, they live under horrible conditions. Go to any large construction site and find where the workers live.

Construction workers by nature/the way they lead their lives are very different. May be instead you should talk to your house maid and find out :). To note these people run families with just around $150-200 earning a month. And we are of course talking about $60 per person.

Do you know teachers in private schools in India start with $60 as their monthly pay and on avg earn $150 I guess.

In Bangalore it would last you about 2-4 months depending on how exactly you live. (I assume you want a decent pad, internet connectivity, cellphone, eat out occasionally and so on) In cheaper places you could get by for 6 - 8 months. If you want to just "subsist" (eat well + roof over your head and you don't care where you live in India) you could go a year or even two.

(PS a lot of people live on less, but then a lot of people own their own hoouses or are really poor and malnourished etc)

Total expenses: $3960/per annum

As the matter of fact, entry level salary for software engineer in an ordinary company is $5000 per annum. Moreover, if you share your apartment, you can still reduce your expenses, and in fact save lot of money.

This is simply not true in Bangalore (I don't know about Hyderbad/ pune). (I've been living "decently" in Bangalore for the last 15 years). But hey if you can manage it, good for you.

"entry level salary for software engineer in an ordinary company is $5000 per annum."

people being hired out of college campuses (in other words n their first job) $10,000 - $12500 these days - and that too for the generic body shopping companies.

Government jobs (often with free housing and other perks) get you 5000 $/annum as a starting rate. Software jobs pay considerably more. If you are getting 5000$/ year for programming, you are significantly underpaid.

For anyone planning to come to Bangalore with 5k$, be warned, you will be scraping by. So, unless you plan to live very (VERY) cheap , iow "roughing it" , plan on about 10,000 $/ year for Bangalore. Bangalore is arguably the most expensive place to live in India (Some parts of Bombay are costlier).

I have had many expat friends stay in Bangalore for long periods. I just chatted with a couple of them as I was writing this post and they agree that 10k is enough for a decent (not great) year in Bangalore fr a year.

My advice, talk to someone who's relocated here from the USA and stayed a year or more and let them fill you in (vs getting dubious advice from a forum, even HN).

Additionally you also need to factor out that you would be a foreigner and at times locals hike their prices and you might not get fair deals.

You would get best available non-commercial broadband with unlimited download limit for < $20

I think it is how comfortable are you going lean. When we ran out of funds in our start-up I taught my co-founder to go lean - he was pleased at the end of the saga how he could actually live healthy & happy with very minimal cash. $300 is very good for start-up founders ensuring a calm place to stay & occasional business meetings too.