Midwestern college town? Champaign, IL! I had a place near campus for $230/month with parking. You can probably live on $600 a month. Also, tech guys come through here all the time (UIUC cs students are fairly sought-after, especially because they'll work for less than their Cal equivalents) so you'll be in good company. And they usually bring free pizza; there are a couple weeks a semester around the job fair when the recruiters are hanging out in town that you can live off of free pizza about every other day. On that note, there's also a bunch of students that you could get to hack part-time if you needed a man-hour boost. There's tons of really bright students here that will work for peanuts if you pitch it right.

The downtown area is reasonably nice and, if you wanted an office, there's a bunch going up right now in the heart of downtown. If you really need a big city, you can get to chicago in ~2.5 hours.

The down side: if you drive more than 10 miles in any direction, you might start to regret your decision. Central Illinois is flatter than you might be able to conceive if you're not from the midwest. There's really just endless fields of crops in every direction outside the city - they say you can see 10 miles in any direction on a clear day, 20 if you stand on a tuna can. Also, it was in the low 60's 2 days ago... today it snowed about 6 inches with sleet and plenty of wind. I guess you get what you pay for.

I agree that the India plan will be inexpensive only if the projects take more than 2 months.

Problem with Goa is that it is very expensive due to all the tourists. It is comparable to the west, I hear. Coimbatore has mild climate, a dozen engineering colleges, inexpensive housing, great public transport, great food etc.

general rule of thumb: any place in a foreign country where most speak English will be expensive.