Every newspaper around the corner is busy criticizing Shiv Sena. We as part of the so called educated middle class of India safely stick to the words “Equality, Liberty, Rights, Duties, etc” written in our constitution. Let us not forget that the laws are formed by men and where you find the laws most numerous, there you will find also the greatest injustice. It astonishes me to find that most of my countrymen are not able to see both sides of the problem.
According to me migration is the mother of all problems. If Bihar is not able to employ its uneducated youth, then why should Mumbai bear the grunt of excessive population and poverty. Mumbai, the great metropolitan of India, is slowly disintegrating into slums as a result of 300-400 families entering into it on daily basis. How are we planning to support them? Aren’t the resources and the overstretched infrastructure already eaten up? Are we not facing huge traffic jams on every nook and corner of the city? What happens if all the Biharis enter into Mumbai one day and take up all the menial jobs which were once kept for the undereducated Marathi youth? And what about the development of Bihar which will ultimately be devoid of its labor force? Why are we trying to make Mumbai a power house of everything while leaving Manipur or Nagaland to develop on their own? These are the questions we must ask ourselves before criticizing the basic ideology of “Mumbai for Marathis”. We just can’t afford to sacrifice one state in order to protect the other. So, I see nothing wrong in supporting Thackeray’s cause but certainly I don’t believe in his methods.
When we say migrants – we are mainly talking about the uneducated class who come into another city in search of a better job. It is important to understand that when a worker who comes all the way from UP to Mumbai, he is ready to do a work for a much lesser pay which otherwise would have been offered to a similar uneducated unemployed Marathi youth. So it is certainly a bad time for the Marathis. There is much unemployment already in India and to add to this if someone kicks you out of the job just because another person is doing it for a lesser pay, then surely this becomes a social problem which calls for a serious solution.
So, the migration has to stop and laws have to change. There must be some inter-state VISA laws in place just like the US. There should be work VISAS for a stipulated time or may be something like that which keeps a stringent check on the migrating labor. There has to be some development in each state. India just can’t move in a direction where the GDP of one state is almost 100 times that of the other. What I am talking looks like an Utopian philosophy since there is no such law even near to it. In fact some time back there was a buzz about separating Mumbai from Maharashtra and thus making it an independent state. The philosophy behind the separation was that Mumbai alone eats up the state budget whereas the other cities have to remain satisfied with a smaller amount. Don’t you think we are maintaining double standards when we say that?
Thackeray is demanding nothing but just that. He is supporting a Maharashtra for Marathi people. He wants it to be separated from the rest so that it could develop by its own, on its own and for its own lower class people amongst others. But at the same time we have to be critical of his means to achieve that. We can’t see the beating and killing of people coming to Mumbai for a Railway Exam. We can’t listen to the unreasonable insults done to our stars who have done nothing but maintained a politically correct stand on certain issues. We cannot bear the hate speeches made in public by the so called Sainiks against our North Indians. But may be one day it leads to some change in the policies. May be 5 or 10 years down the line, we have a law which checks on migration. And we begin to witness the laws which have a moral basis and have an inner compelling force for every citizen to obey.
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