Some dangerous opinions have been expressed in this thread which i believe are direct consequences of the lopsided growth of cities and states in India.
And a quick little note for all the people who seem to support anti-immigration measures. Remember two things:
1. Locals probably wouldn't do many of the menial jobs.
2. A lot of Mumbai's success is because it is the city of dreams. Everyone wants to come there, setup there. Of late a lot of companies have left mumbai, and such agitations will only increase that outflow. That will be really bad for the city.
That is true however the problem arises when the locals want to do the so called menial jobs. Giving credit where its due, I have always noticed that the people from Bihar, UP are enterprising hard working lot(even though they bend the rules and in some cases work hard to debauch later) and they tend to make money out of things that no one else thought you could make money out of. The locals might not not necessarily want to take the jobs they do at the start but when they see them getting rich, they get jealous. This happens everywhere. In most cases they are too lazy to do it or think of it themselves and when they see the people from outside coming and getting richer they start thinking of ways to replicate that.
One of the worst things that i am starting to hear is that we are now starting to divide ourselves in regions, north, south, west(east anyway from assam onwards never really felt part of India thanks to the wonderful policies we have had). It just doesn't augur well for India as a country if this goes on. If people start feeling possessive about their own states then no one can save this country. Here is an example right from Maharashtra. Right within maharashtra vidarbha provides the maximum power to the state and in return gets the least power. It basically provides the light so that the Mumbai guys can hava a gala time while the farmers here have to do with 12 hours powercuts not to forget the normal cities that go with 8 hour powercuts. There is a huge demand from everyone cutting across any race or caster barriers that Vidarbha should be own state and the power should be provided to its people not to the people of Mumbai. If Mumbai guys start saying its their city and everyone else can go to hell, the same arguments will be applied everywhere.
Those who think Mumbai can survive by its marathi population are living in fools paradise. Mumbai became what it is by its plurality. If the plurality is gone, so will the business go. The argument that city is getting too many migrants so stop migrants is also a bad one. All cities world over grow this way. They do so cos the jobs are in the cities. Even if we are to develop the hinterland, the ports will still get the people. The important thing is to develop the infrastructure. Having said that you can't deelop the infrastructure without the people. What Marathi's are claiming is that only the marathi's get the jobs to develop and then the rich come from all over India and they only should get to have all the fruits of their wealth. Very often the people will come from other states(the rich ones) cos of their jobs and if you are going to throw them out, the companies will go to.
Also many people tend to forget(atleast its true in Delhi) is that most migrants are also from Bangladesh. The slimy rotten lot are first grade thieves. They register themselves as Indians and get away with it after bribing the local authorities.
That brings me to another point. Most local officials in Maharastra are local Marathi's. So if there is illegal construction, shanties coming up, they are the ones who take the bribe. There is this case of an outstanding IAS officer whom i have had a chance to meet, T chandrashekhar(
Mumbai Matters: Farewell Dr. T)(a south Indian mind you) who changed the landscape of Nagpur while he was in Nagpur and then he was handpicked to take up the job in Thane and as CEO of MHADA. While in Nagpur he threw out all illegal shanties and constructed world class roads and took up beautification work on war footing. Everybody is reaping the benefits of what he did. He lands up in Thane and then in Mumbai and the local politicians and the people in power along with the offices
make life hell for him. Unless ther eis support, nothing is ever gonna happen. Her is a guy trying to solve the illegal construction problem and no one raises a voice to support him. Everyone is on the streets to create chaos though. But when you could have fought a silent battle and stood by a man who was genuinely trying to solve a problem, no one stood by him.
How long is someone going to harp the "This is a democracy and i am free to do whatever i want" line until it's bad enough ? i dunno where you live but currently mumbai is stuck between a hard place and rock. Add to that the influx of people thats alarming ! I am not blaming any section or strata of the society here but something has to be done here for the good of the city that we all love so much. If nothing's done soon enough to tackle this issue then i'm afraid mumbai is going to go down pretty soon......
Yea Delhi will say that next and next Bangalore will say it.
Bangalore will say go back all marathi IT guys cos you are destroying the traditional culture(they will say the same to other north Indians) and the delhites will say we don't want anything to do with the south cos as it is they care very less about what happens down south. In Punjab the only thing people care about the South is the engineering colleges and now they are starting to come up within the state, they care about nothing. So basically we should all live within our own states. (Have a division on linguistic lines(which will distinctly put the Notrth Indians ahead cos of a very common language) and split the country in 3 parts. There is a reason we keep harping on democracy cos without it this country can't go forward. Its diverse and one of the ways to hold it is by getting people to move and stay in other places. If we have a problem in Kashmir today its cos the Kashmiri hindus have been thrown out and we just have a particular religious faith people remaining and no Indian can take up residence there so that there is always a threat of that state revolting as it doesn't know anything or is connected with anything Indian.
City wise divisions won't take this country anywhere. (More at night
)
Re: So whose Bombay is it anyway?
