आपली Mumbai

Today's leading daily had a front page news, Sena President and Son of Sena Supremo, Uddhav Thackeray, would be revitalize the "Son of Soil" agenda of Shiv Sena। Just few days back, in an interview with a news channel, nephew of shiv supremo and President of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, Raj Thackeray said, that his party is against the migration of people from rest of the country to Mumbai. The basic idea being opposing migration of people to Mumbai from rest of the country and trying to provide jobs to the locals.

Both the parties have give inflammatory remarks on the topic time and again and have faced protest from all over India.

If Delhi is the Heart of India, Mumbai is the Brain. The city is the financial capital of the country, providing jobs to millions of people. Imagine you are watching a Hindi movie, first the background track starts, sound of traffic, horns, lots of commotion...then the visual is of an Victorian building, camera zooming out to an wide angle showing a lot of traffic, and loads of people coming out of that building...the first thought in your mind "Mumbai" . Most of the people who have not visited Mumbai have this image of Mumbai. Mumbai is always been called the city of dreams. What ever is your dream, this is the city to fulfill it and we have examples of people coming to this city with nothing and creating empire.

But then if you think over it, why are these two parties stopping people to come to this place and build their future? More than that, why should anyone stop anybody from going from one place to other for any reason in the same country. You can stop people from entering your country, but how can you stop an Indian citizen entering an Indian city or a state for that matter? You cannot, you should not. There had been protests for the same reason.

The protests had been fair and what Sena had done few years earlier to the Candidates of the National Rail examination was definitely wrong. But there is another view to it. I dont know how many have actually thought about this. Mumbai as a city does not have a far reaching history as Delhi or Pune. Its comparatively new city. Initially, it was seven islands (not exactly sure of the number), which were then collectively called Mumbai. Initial inhabitants of the islands were the fishermen. Later on advent of British, the islands were linked to form a city. So this city has sea on the three sides and land on one.
People from rest of the country have been coming to metros in search of job for a long time now. But the major advantage Delhi or Bangalore has is that its surrounded by Land. Delhi has grown tremendously, Gudhgaon, Noida and Gaziabad are no longer small industrial areas, they are now part of Delhi! But this cannot happen with Mumbai. Mumbai has only one side growth. People are already traveling 150 Km from Pune to Mumbai daily for jobs. All those people who have live in Mumbai will accept that Mumbai has become more crowded than before. And here i am not talking about people of age 75-80 yrs who say "हमारे time मे इतनी भीड़ नही हुआ करती थी" I am talking about people of my age, age 25-30। Wont you guys admit, there were times when, if you had to travel leisurely and luxuriously in locals you would leave at about 11 AM to avoid the crowds? But now there is no funda of peak times, the whole day is peak time. Any time of the day, the trains and Buses are crowded. This is something we all have experienced. The traffic on the roads have increased, every other place in this city is crowded.
How has this happened? Is India's growing population responsible for this, of course it is, but if you see the population growth in other cites in India with Mumbai, Mumbai's growth is definitely more. So where are these people coming from? Rest of the places in India. I guess we all accept that the current infrastructure of the city is not able to cope with the every increasing population of the city.

Lets try and find a solution to it:

1. The local trains and buses are crowded. The solution to this could be increasing the frequency of the buses and trains. How feasible is this option? More frequency of buses means buying new buses by the public transport, means total number of buses on the road would increase, means more traffic? Increasing the frequency of trains? This sounds feasible, but if we see, we literally have trains running every minute from a particular station. On an average, two local stations are about 3-4 minutes apart by local and the train stops on the station for about 2 minutes. So if we keep increasing the frequency of trains, the trains would be all back to back and no place for them to move :) Imagine one Loooong train from VT to Kasara/Karjat. Build Sky Buses...this is good one...provided we have enough money to build it.
2. We have a housing space shortage. There are people staying in slums, where there are no basic amenities present. Rehabilitation of these people to better houses is a good solution. But then where do the state administration rehabilitate these people to? There is no place in Mumbai, may be somewhere in remote suburbs. But would these people be ready to move to these remote suburbs, they want to stay in heart of Mumbai.
   

all these things need money. Where does the city and the state administration get money from to increase the infrastructure of the city. Good Question, where does a city get money from!
obviously from the taxes paid by the people staying in the city. so to get more money, increase taxes. But then whome are we increasing taxes for? Are we increasing taxes for the people who are not paying the taxes? that sounds unfair for the people who are pay taxes, doesn't it?

The issue raised by the Sena and MNS is something seriously should be thought about. Their way of execution might be wrong, but the issue is definitely serious enough to be dismissed as a publicity gimmick by the parties.