Targeted Taxi Drivers

Thanks quin....glad u r back and have taken your comments sincerely, just as u have given them. Pl write again for us all....I like yr work.
All the best

Lokhi,
Today, after a while I went to Chowk and saw your heartfelt poem. I liked not only how you highlighted the suffering of hardworking taxi-men, and the insenstivities of politicians but also how by doing that you created a metaphor that captures the irony of life at large in spite of a setting and background which is very specific. As far as handling of words and the arrangements of elements is concerned there seems to be room for further polishing. Otherwise, it is a beautiful poem. I make this comment in the true spirit of a writer's well wishes and hope you will see it in the same spirit. Congratulations and keep up the good work.

You have brought out the different aspects, chittagong. But the clincher is:

"Hence, some of Raj Thackeray’s concerns are right, but he has voiced them wrongly."
If he really wanted to do something it would not just be at the level of beating up a few poor people.

Re: # 1
Absolutely chittagong.
I am a nonmaharashtrian living in Maharashtra and have found them to be very sincere friends, very up front and decent.No false insincere friendly noises and hatred behind a veil. I would love to learn the language and am about to start conversation classes to learn to speak Marathi properly, which I can understand very well.Most Mumbaikers are down to earth and suffer and curse just as much when any trouble is stirred up.

Therefore, Raj Thackeray, whose Maharashtra Navanirman Sena has made impressive strides in a short time after breaking away from the Shiv Sena, has done no good either to Maharashtra’s proud reputation, or to himself, by making ill-advised remarks about North Indians in Mumbai or about a national icon like Amitabh Bachchan. He has a promising political future. He would, therefore, do well to win the support of the city’s considerable population of North Indians in his inclusive political strategy, without being apologetic about espousing legitimate Marathi pride.

While one must condemn anything that weakens our unifying Indian identity, it would be hypocritical to turn a blind eye to certain harsh social and political realities of Mumbai. With 1.9 crore residents in the Mumbai Metropolitan Area, which includes Navi Mumbai and Thane, its population has rapidly grown to become greater than the combined population of nine Indian states. Its once-famed infrastructure is highly overstretched, lowering the quality of life for rich and poor alike. It once had the best municipal governance in India; not any more. Fifty-four per cent of its residents live in slums, most of which are so unbelievably congested and squalid that it is criminal on the part of any government to let people live in such inhuman conditions. It is well known to authorities that tens of thousands of Bangladeshis, many with voting rights, are living in Mumbai. Some 20,000 houses in the older part of the city are in a dangerously dilapidated state, the reason why every monsoon one reads about people dying in incidents of house collapse.

Mumbai is decaying. But few politicians in the city, state or country are taking a serious and comprehensive view of its chronic condition, and fewer still are willing to take the tough decisions to set things right. By tough decisions, one does not mean banning ‘outsiders’ — north Indians or Indians from any other part of India — from settling in Mumbai. That certainly is wrong. But is it wrong to hold that encroachments should be stopped, that people must not be allowed to occupy pavements and places earmarked for public utilities, or that the cut-off years for regularisation of slums must be strictly adhered to?

Indeed, some political parties have developed a vested interest in allowing unauthorised settlements to proliferate for vote-bank considerations. When illegal settlements along the lethally polluted Mithi river were sought to be cleared after the July 2005 deluge in Mumbai, which claimed nearly 500 lives, it was stoutly resisted by local politicians who felt threatened that their voter-base would shrink. Mumbaikars know of hundreds of such examples of duplicity and political muscle-flexing.

The question that Raj Thackeray and many people in Mumbai are asking is: How can slum redevelopment and rehabilitation ever succeed if there is political patronage for the creation of new slums? How can Mumbai ever see orderly urban development, with world-class infrastructure and civic amenities for all its residents, if there is deliberate and corruption-induced disorder in the use of its most scarce resource — land? Indeed, which Indian city can grow well if short-term and partisan political interests undermine a long-term and integral vision of urban renewal?

Hence, some of Raj Thackeray’s concerns are right, but he has voiced them wrongly.

http://www.indianexpress.com/sunday/story/271207.html

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Respect_local_culture_or_suffer_Raj/articlesh ow/2770188.cms

It is believed that your stand against the migrants is political desperation.

No. I said the same things when I was in Shiv Sena. I am saying the same things now. I will say it to Maharashtrians who work in other states too. Wherever you go, respect the local culture or you will suffer. Maharashtrians in America have a Maharashtra mandal every year. You know when they celebrate it? On July 4, the American Independence Day. That's respect for local culture.

What is the solution to the migrant problem?

The solution lies in the progress of UP and Bihar. Those states are so hopeless that thousands are flocking to Mumbai. But the city cannot take the burden anymore. Look at our roads, our trains and parks. On the pipes that bring water to Mumbai are 40,000 huts. It is a security hazard. The footpaths too have been taken over by migrants. The message has to go to UP and Bihar that there is no space left in Mumbai for you. After destroying the city, the migrants will go back to their villages. But where will we go then?

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main37.asp?filename=Ne160208camel.asp

Camel In The Tent

The Marathis embraced all Indians as their own. Now, they are cramped for space, writes ARUN SADHUK

AMID THE DIN of parochial rhetoric between Raj Thackeray and some north Indian leaders, it is necessary to expose historical prejudices that political India nurses against Maharashtra. Historical because these sentiments emanate from the 17th century Delhi Durbar, that seat of intrigues and conspiracies, when the great Maratha leader Shivaji turned his back on the powerful Mughal emperor. The Delhi Durbar syndrome which still dominates Indian politics today failed to understand that among the hundreds of contemporary sardars, rajas and nabobs in the subcontinent, Shivaji was the only one who dared to infuse the spark of political freedom against the world’s greatest power then.

Subsequent forays by the Maratha-Peshwa forces in the Jatland, Bengal and Orissa did not help change this image. The Delhi shenanigans of the modern Marathi political leaders (such as YB Chavan and Sharad Pawar) made matters worse. Maharashtrians — intellectuals (including Marxists), politicians and commoners, not just the Shiv Sena — are proud of Shivaji. They suspect others are sceptical.

An overwhelming majority of Marathi youth endorsed the Shiv Sena’s championship of the Marathi Manoos in 1966. It rejected the Sena politically as the latter utterly failed to live up to its word. Shiv Sena could never become a classical regional political party such as the DMK, Telugu Desam, the CPM in West Bengal or even the Gujarat BJP to capture power in Maharashtra on its own. It was only when it shed its Marathi syndrome that it could have a share in power in coalition with the BJP. Most Maharashtrians groan with pain and frustration when they see regional leaders from north and south India and superficial green-eared mediapersons paint entire Maharashtra with the Shiv Sena’s saffron.

Thus the image of the Maharashtrian caricatured by half-baked historians, the domineering durbari phenomenon of Delhi, the essentially sectarian leaders of regional parties and the media as a whole is like this: a parochial, sectarian, narrow-minded people; always quarrelsome and bereft of any talent or creativity and trying to impose their language and culture on others. To be sociologically objective, the reality is quite opposite.

The first thing that an outsider settling in Maharashtra learns is that the overwhelming mass of Marathis as a people are among the most tolerant and inclusive people in the world. Those who came to the Maratha land centuries ago lived here happily and prospered without being subjected to imposition of the local language as happens in Chennai, Kolkata or Ahmedabad. On the contrary, these migrants, proud of their native language and culture, find it strange that the Marathis often abandon their mother tongue and try to communicate with strangers in the smattering of any cosmopolitan tongue available.

Unlike in other parts of the world, it is not necessary to learn Marathi to live in Maharashtra. Uttar Bharatiyas, Telugus, Gujaratis, Rajasthanis have lived in deep rural areas of Maharashtra for generations without learning Marathi. They have created their empires of trade and enterprise. Local Marathis have cheerfully accepted these groups as their own. If they dominate the economic life of Maharashtra, so be it. The Marathis have long acknowledged their own lack of talent for trade or entrepreneurship. Shivaji or latter day Maratha rulers, whenever they established new towns or kasbahs, had always honourably invited nagarseths from Marwar and Gujarat to do trade and industry. That is one major shortcoming of the Maharashtrian society in the new world of competitive markets. Mumbai is a city built by migrants — Maharashtrians and “outsiders”. But it can no longer take any more migrants, Maharashtrian or not. Raj Thackeray’s outburst is the first symptom of the impending implosion. Other Indian metropolises only await their turn.

The writer is a novelist and journalist