Raj!
Did you know that India is supposed to be shining and all?
Have you read about it? Maybe you haven't and maybe you have and disagree with it - violently - because all this anger and violence against North Indians (or any people) is contrary to the shining principle. I think shining means more than making money from foreign companies. It also means some emancipation, tolerance and getting over regional and linguistic divides.
Besides Mumbai can't be and remain a great city just being a Maratha city - like NYC or London can't be mono-community cities - so you have to decide whether you're for successful, progressive, shining Mumbai thus Shining India or turn the lights off - no break the lights - on it.
Frankly it's a bit embarrassing for India - all this news about your spirited self expression - but you don't give a fuck do you - not suggesting that you do - because that would be contrary to India's national interest which maybe contrary to your self interest - so that makes sense.
Pip pip - and remember if you do this right maybe someone will make a video game about you which will have violence galore - twisting off the head of a North Indian kid, ripping a Sikhs guts - you'd enjoy that, no?
Monday, February 4, 2008
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17 comments:
Hi Jeet
The list of what you believe in - I also believe in those things. You are quite younger than me, but these issues have been there since India became Independent.
I have read a few of your posts. I liked them.
I do not see any one commenting on them. Do you get E-Mails from like minded people?
I live in New Zealand. I get NDTV at home. I see that CMs of UP and Bihar have commented on Raj Thakceray.
Man,
You write some brilliant stuff.I've been following your blog since the post on 'Tata-Orient Express'(I reached there when I googled for it)
You write about relations,economy,Indian politics...Writing about so-many varied topics in a single blog resembles a collage of your thoughts.
I am always waiting for and anticipating what your new post is going to be about.
Keep on the good work.
Man,
You write some brilliant stuff.
I've been following your blog since the 'Tata-Orient Express' post.
I reached there through Googling.
You write about so-many varied topics;Human Relations,Indian Politics,Economy......
Writing about all these things at a single place resembles the collage of your thoughts...your thoughts about life,the way you see the world,how you think about people.
Keep on the good work as people like me are always waiting for and anticipating what your next post is gonna be..
hello there..nice article.though i feel you wanted to say many more things abt raj..well i think howmuchever we comment on him..some people are just not the right kind to live in a civilized society..and lately i hv heard news abt changinf the name of bombay scottish school..cant understand in which world does he live. Nice article and I really share the same thoughts as you guys.
Hi Everyone,
Looks good that people have started talking about the issues happening in India sitting abroad.
I have a different perspective to the situation here. First i would like to enlighten you all about the name changing ceremony. Bangalore = Bangaluru, Orrisa = Oddisa and many more examples can be quoted about people other than the marathi manus who have strong convictions and also believe in their own cultural heritage. Also going the globalisation way does not really mean that you should see your people suffer and let others enjoy the pie. Yes as a nation we should be unified and also think about our country man. However while we do have states to guard there own borders and a seperate state body to govern the states dont you think for a state leader like Raj it is justified that he thinks about the local people. Let me give you an example from one of his speeches. We live in a Housing Complex or a Society and also we have a small garden attached for the kids of the people living in the society to play. Whilst we do not have any objection for our children or our neighbours children to play in it but would we allow some one from out of the housing society to use the garden. Absoulutely a big no. Yes the constitution says that India is a free land for its citizens and any one can stay any where and mind you the society garden is also a part of the territory of India. Let me divert your attention to one another issue. Do go the field and meet some people out there who have set up factories in Maharashtra. Ask them where does their man power come from. You will find that they refrain from employing locals. The primary reason being that they do not want their workforce to unify and question the managements decisions. People coming from out of the state always have a fear of loosing their jobs if they question the authority. Even the USA which we all Indians think as the biggest power has started thinking seriously about the job outsourcing from their country to India and all the politicians in USA have this on their agenda as the locals have started loosing their jobs.
I think spearhead though you have tried hard to pose an argument you fail miserably because there is basically no excuse to the crap that Raj Thakeray does!! Try giving your ill logical reasoning to the widow or an orphan of someone who these HINDU terrorists have killed or disabled. You just cannot progressively move forward if you continue fighting in your own backyard. Thats the difference in Germany, Japan and India. Raj Thakeray can go and take a flying fuck with his stupid marathi manus agenda!! BOMBAY is as much as Bihars as is Maharashtras. And this comes from a hardcore Bombayite!!
Great stuff allright!, but hey, this aint going nowhere unless u n' I understand what makes crackpots like Raj tick. Tyacha Khopdi Ughdoon dissection karayla pahije. There are two things here - the man and the agenda. The man.. needs to be ignored (coz if he was a bihari, he would be fighting for the rights of biharis in Mumbai - with conviction!... dont you get it, he doesnt care a fuck which side he is on! so long as he gets into parliament. ) The agenda on the other hand .. is a bit tricky - here we have educated marathis coming into the fold of this propaganda.. something which will have vastly long term effects.. long after Raj has moved from the local to the national arena (yes i am sure he will... sadly though he's playing all his cards right). I have been born and brought up in Mumbai. Im sure I have played with enough Street kids near Bhindi bazaar and eaten pav bhaji at Haji Ali's more than Raj Thackerey any day. My wife is Marathi. im a mumbaikar thru n thru! But hey, i think, by dignifying this guy's antics on ethnic ground is crap in its own right! he is here today, gone tomorrow. But the consequences of OUR reactions will hurt you and me for long to come... There is no option for such guys except to either put them down (as in rabid D**s)or vote them into power. But maybe thats what we thought when Shivsena came into govt and there were no more riots (coz the goons - they now had a national agenda!). But sadly it was not to be- Enter the Raj T. and the cycle goes on !!
ps: Raj, with my wife a marathi my kids are gonna be "50%-Marathi", but 100% Mumbaikar- kay mhane? - more than you will ever be, so do they have permission to stay!!!? .... on second thought, maybe they would kick YOUR kids out to UP. (you know except for the language... you speak exactly like Modi or Lalu !!)
Great article. I just wrote a poem on Raj...enjoy -
The Raj Thakeray Menace – By the guy that's half Maharashtrian, half Punjabi and married to an American
We live in a nation that's solemnly divided,
By religion and sect and just when that had subsided,
Along came a spider to rekindle the issues,
Of the apparently oppressed Marathi Manoos,
He despises everything western, he's like a lit fuse,
Coz he thinks of the west as giving us cultural abuse,
As if this wasn't enough, he actively tries to confuse,
The illiterate public sentiment on sensitive issues,
But Raj, I've got to say you're a little bit hypocritical,
When you use the policy of "divide and rule" which was one of the critical,
Weapons of the British, so aren't your politics west inspired?
It's kind of ironic that you hate the west and then you conspired,
To mislead the public using the same tools and weapons,
Of the people that you hate, that brings your credibility in question,
And whats all this ruckus over the language of Marathi about?
Why are you trying to get all of the North Indians out,
Of Bombay, and by the way to establish Marathi's superiority,
Why'd you have to pull down other languages, I guess it's just out of curiosity,
That I ask these questions coz you're tactics seem narcissistic at best,
And hypocritical while you're busy trying to weed out the west,
From the minds and hearts and souls of all us Bombayites,
Why do you feel the only way to get what you want is by starting a fight?
Why resort to violence in the world's largest democracy?
Is it because you're subconsciously aware of your tactic's hypocrisy?
Whatever happened to "freedom of expression and speech"
As mentioned in the preamble to the constitution, it used to be within reach,
Of every Indian, before you came along,
Yes the constitution was written by a Maharashtrian long before you and I were born,
And it is yet so much more liberal than you are today,
Please don't try to take credit away,
For what Ambedkar did, you're nothing compared to him today,
And if you continue the same way, you won't even be closer tomorrow,
Looking at your bullying ways is a matter of sorrow,
And shame and regret for this entire nation,
When you act and behave in this narrow minded fashion,
We're already divided as it is by religion, social standing and economic status,
Why do you play your dirty politics and try to further divide us?
And I'm at the end of my wits with have the shit that gets said,
What did Jaya Bachchan do wrong? I'm still scratching my head,
So what if she said something good about Hindi?
Does that mean automatically that she's got hatred for Marathi?
That doesn't even make sense, and then you acted all incensed,
Demanding an apology, for what? This is such time consuming nonsense,
That you're indulging in, and what do you get at the end of the day?
Some people getting hurt and feeling unsafe?
Why don't you come to me and we can debate all day,
I'm half marathi and half Punjabi and married to an American so hey, you should have a field day!
Coz the things that you are fighting and what you are at the same time is what you'll see in my face.
You're turning this city into a warzone, and readers this is just a preface,
There's much more to come in future columns about the Raj Thakeray Menace.
All you englightened gentlemen and women,
Nothing could be easier than saying "Raj is wrong, mad, goonda etc. and that India is for all people etc. etc."
What would be more difficult is to have the guts (and many other things) to ask
1. Is Raj just wrong about his means / methods or is there a possibility that there is a genuine issue / perception that needs to be addressed?
2. What are the elected representatives from Maharashtra doing to address the above? Isn't it the failure of our so-called secular, democratic system that has caused this situation?
3. Lastly, if Indian states were formed by linguistic reorganization, how difficult is it to anticipate this situation?
If all of you are truly enlightened, educated and proud Indians, let us elevate this discussion beyond the obvious and have a candid (not partisan or parochial) discussion about Raj.
Railways nail MNS lie
The sons-of-the-soil theory in railway recruitments may not hold. Faced with a violent agitation spearheaded by the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), railway authorities countered that the recruitments are purely merit-based with no favouritism shown towards any particular community or aspirants from a state. Several of the candidates who had arrived from north India on Saturday to appear for the Railway Recruitment Board (RRB) exams were beaten up allegedly by MNS activists, demanding that the “outsiders” should not hog jobs of locals. DNA spoke to railway officials to clear the air on the application and selection procedure used in RRB exams:
How are the recruitments done?
Every zonal railway collects the number of vacancies in its respective divisions and submits a consolidated figure of the number of employees required under a particular category. The RRB, an autonomous body under the ministry of railways that conducts examinations and select candidates, scrutinises such requests and finalises the examination to be conducted for each category.
Why do thousands of north Indians come to the city for the examinations?
Mumbai, for that matter Maharashtra, is not the only centre for RRB examinations. These exams are conducted across the country at various places. It just happens that anyone from any part of the country may get Mumbai as the examination centre.
Where and when did the ads appear in Marathi newspapers?
As per procedure, we place the advertisements in at least two important Marathi newspapers, in this case Loksatta and Lokmat, one English newspaper and one regional Hindi newspaper, besides making an announcement through Employment News (a paper that highlights job opportunities). Despite all this, if the local youth do not apply, we cannot be expected to go around every household, requesting Maharashtrians to apply.
For how many vacancies were the examinations conducted on Sunday?
Four zonal railways, including Central (CR) and Western Railway (WR), submitted their requirement of 518 vacancies - which included 38 in the enquiry-cum-reservation-clerk category; 134 as assistant station masters and 346 guards. As many as 1.45 lakh candidates applied for jobs with CR and WR, but about 26,000 actually came to write the exam.
What is the examination procedure like?
Examinations by RRB are conducted in an absolutely transparent manner. Apparently, the procedure was amended; earlier, candidates would be interviewed before they were selected. But following criticism about favouritism, this was discontinued. There are three different papers, with multiple choice questions, set for every exam to ensure that no two students sitting next to each other get the same question paper.
The general feeling is that they are here to clear exams for posting in Maharashtra?
It is not necessary that a candidate who writes the RRB examination papers in Mumbai will get posted in the city. The posting can be anywhere in the country where the railways, for which the exams are held, exist.
http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1200677&pageid=0
I have no problems with anyone coming and settling down in Mumbai, in that eternal search of a better life. That's any individual's natural tendency and best not to be curbed.
However, I have a serious problem with people leaving their homes in places as distant as Bihar or Uttar Pradesh not because they chose to come here but because they were forced out.
This 'forcing out' is called, in demography and economics, 'the push factor'.
That is a jargon which means that when Mumbai can 'pull' people because of the dreams it offers, dreams that are most often realised in one measure or another, an environment hostile to the very notion of mere survival pushes them out of their homes there.
Why they flee?
I have serious problems with such a situation. Because people don't find jobs there that can offer even the minimum sustenance, they leave what passes off as their home and hearth and arrive, near destitute but with hope in their dim eyes, in the big cities, not just Mumbai. They literally flee those tormented lives.
This would be so different if their own states were hospitable enough to their own populations. But tragically, they are not.
It is axiomatic that if you rule badly, if your norms of governance do not meet even the minimum basic requirements of the people, if social justice is denied in a caste-dominated society, along with economic deprivation, if jobs shrink or new ones are not available, then people would desert those rulers by looking to new pastures elsewhere.
Poor not at fault
By no stretch of imagination can the poor migrant be faulted. It is more the governments that have been singularly unsuccessful by being gross under-performers on the social and economic fronts and fuelling out-migrations. And efficient states have to bear the burden.
But has the influx of the people from those outback areas, which reduced the populations there by just that much, made any difference to those who stayed behind? Obviously not for the out-migration from those locations continues.
Here are some numbers. I am using the Mumbai context mainly because it is a subject that has hotted up in recent times although spots around Ludhiana in Punjab too have been having problems with regard to migrants.
The numbers
In 2001, of the total population of 11,978,450 residents of Mumbai, 5,185,429 people were migrants who came in from 1991. That is they were born outside Mumbai or their last reported place of living was not Mumbai. Of them, 1,258,905 had come from Uttar Pradesh alone; 181,690 had moved in from Bihar. That is, of all the migrants, 24 per cent were from UP and 3.5 per cent from Bihar.
These are Census figures. In the decade previous to that, the strength of total migrants to the total population was 12 per cent in the case of those from UP and 0.5 per cent from Bihar. Again, Census 1991 figures, as authentic as they come. But here is a clarifier -- these are figures for Mumbai, not the peripheral and satellite towns like Navi Mumbai, Mira-Bhayander, Vasai-Virar, Ulhasnagar, Kalyan-Dombivli, Thane, etc, where their proportion could be higher or on par, but not less.
So what have we now? We have people like Nitish Kumar, Bihar's chief minister, saying that he -- Mr Nitish Kumar -- has gone to the extent of threatening to freeze fund flows in Mumbai over attacks on Biharis. This was reported in The Stateman, Kolkata, on November 2. That is pure blather, to say the least. Does Bihar have that kind of resources which keeps Mumbai alive?
If you have it, use it
But if Kumar can turn off the tap, it should help Bihar because those funds could be better deployed there for the benefit of the poor Biharis who make a beeline to Mumbai and other cities. In his piece on February 12, 2007, he said, 'a majority of the cases coming to the Janata Durbar (that he holds) are petitions of families begging to be included in the BPL list'. His assessment of the number of the desperately poor was more than the Centre's calculations.
Dr Suresh Nandan Sinha, a former Professor of MIT, Muzaffarpur, had listed the causes of the problems in Bihar in a seminar paper sometime ago: 'The causes of poverty in Bihar may be viewed in terms of certain parameters such as
(i) Over population and apathy towards family planning;
(ii) Poor land and water management for agriculture;
(iii) Mal-administration, poor governance and corruption;
(iv) Illiteracy;
(v) Poor health care; and
(vi) Lack of industrialisation.'
Likewise, UP
Similar is the story of Uttar Pradesh, which sends more people to Mumbai than does Bihar. UP's per capita income is the lowest in India, only after Orissa and Bihar. On social indicators -- incomes, health, and education -- the state has fared poorly. According to its government's web site, 'Among all the major Indian states, Uttar Pradesh has the highest birth rate and the highest fertility rate.' Also, the pace of population growth has outpaced and nuetralised the growth in incomes.
To revert to my ire at the out-migration from these states: why do those who govern those states expect others to share the burden that arises from the poor governance and neglect of its duties? Why is it that these states do not look inward, abandon caste-based politics -- nothing else matters, does it? -- and revert to a vision and mission to do good to its own populations?
Time they did that, right?
However, it does not mean that migration would stop entirely. That is never possible for as long as inequity persists, farms don't yield adequate livelihoods, and people continue to aspire for better lives. It can only be slowed down by making the man more comfortable in his agrarian milieu. The gush could taper into a trickle.
Do your own first
But the other states too should take counsel and stop demanding that the right to livelihood be assured and ensured in Mumbai and start creating their own jobs quickly and efficiently. Else, it would mean they are interested in only sustaining a one-way flow from their states. They have abdicated their responsibility for 61 long years since India became independent. They could not even touch the fringe of the problem, leave alone solve them.
Obviously, the solution to Mumbai's overload and consequent chaos lies less in Mumbai than it does elsewhere, at the very points from where the migrants originate. That, of course, no city can do by reaching out there.
Mumbai cannot provide the economic props that these deprived societies deserve and solve them when it is groaning under its own problems, partly caused by burgeoning population and partly by mismanagement.
WHERE IS MNS NOW WHEN MUMBAI IS IN BLOODSHADE
THERE ARE NORTH INDIANS ( !!! INDIANS !!!!) AMONG ARMYMEN, RESCUE PERSONALS OPERATING BY RISKING THERE LIVES, FOR PRIDE OF MAHARASHTRA!!!!
WHERE THEH ELL IS MNS, WHERE IS RAAJ THACKREY HIDING, BEHIND HIS WIFE????
where is Raj Thackeray and his "BRAVE" SENA ? Tell him that 200 NSG commandos from delhi (NO marathi manoos! ALL South & North Indians!)have been sent 2 Mumbai to fight the terrorists so that he can sleep peacefully.
want to ask where was raj not finding marathi manas in "nsg cammandoes"
why not he or his sena allow only marathi people in 26/11operation ?
Why the hell is this outburst against marathis & for that matter Raj? The stinking brains and rotten heads are working again. Were biharis sleeping when their back sides were being kicked in North Eastern states? Do they have balls to go & attack locals in Chennai/ Trivendrum/ Panipat/ Vizag ? Maharashtra has a proud tradition of Shivaji, Peshvas, Lokmanya Tilak, Rajguru, Dr. Ambedkar, Vinoba Bhave, Vir Savarkar, YV Chavan, CD Deshmukh & Armed Forces chiefs (Now don't ask who are these people). As a marathi, I can tell you that maharashtrians are peace loving, docile, welcoming and proud people. But if you corner a cat, she will bite you back. Exactly, that's happening with MNS/ Raj. Deep down, all marathis have sympathy towards Raj (may not be towards his methods). Try & understand the problem in all big towns in maharshtra of in-equality, suppression and hijacking of opportunities and one will realise the psyche of marathi youngsters.......bye the way, Raj Thakare was donating blood, visiting hospitals (GT, Kama), and arranging food for police during those 4 days. 17 "shahid" police seem marathis, if that's what you want to know? If this is an all out war to wipe out marathis then so be it...
Why all this mud-slinging? First and foremost, the fact is that according to the constitution of India (made by Dr. Ambedkar, a Marathi), all Indians are equal, and have the full right to live and work anywhere in India. Indeed when one palce becomes more developed, it attracts people from other places, a problem that can be addressed by progressively creating new jobs at other places well. We, as citizens of India, can ask the "Elected Leaders" to pursue our cause. Who is Raj Thakeray? An "Elected Leader"? A Govt Office Bearer? A Law Maker? Nothing but a Goon cum Neta. People should not listen to him and ask for peaceful resollution of problems, from the responsible authorities.
Read this comment carefully - it's not on topic it's just a little something to give you a smile and say thanks for your hard work on this forum!
Hard work has a future payoff. Laziness pays off now. :)
http://gleek.es/?p=360
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