To Goanet - >Modisation of Mumbai >-by Sanjeev Chouhan Wednesday, February 06, 2008 >What is happening in Mumbai today is just an echo of what happened in >Gujarat in the not too distant past.
Don't forget the distant past. 65 million years ago, the dinosaurs were also exterminated by Modi. >Mumbai would not have been the affluent and vibrant metropolis it is today, >without the contribution of the migrants from the other parts of the >country. > >Had it not been for the Punjabis, the Marwaris, the Biharis and the >purbiyas, Mumbai would have remained the fishing community that it was. The >migrant nature of the city is what gives it the luster and sheen. Take that, fellow Goans. You have been blind all along to the lustre and sheen wrought by the ghati slums of Indiranagar, Zuarinagar, Monte Dongor, Betim, Vasco etc etc. Only an uncultivated mind would fail to take note of the sublime incandescence bequeathed to the Panjim river promenade and the Panjim jardims by the loitering, urinating and defecating migrants. The fragrance of migrant droppings you complain about - what would Yves Saint Laurent and Calvin Klein not give for a patent on that one, eh? It is the migrants and the Dilliwallahs, dear Goans, who give your otherwise dull and boring land its vibrance and affluence. It is these ghatis who have lifted you casti-clad kharvi bums out of your lazy stupor. And forget not the pearls of wisdom dropped by our Comrades: the migrants bring "nuance" and "interconnectedness" to your simple, staid lives. Seriously: only the obscurantist would eulogize the unlivable, noxious hellhole that is Mumbai (or any other Indian city for that matter). This romanticizing of Mumbai as some kind of a didactic beehive of human experience is pure hogwash, peddled by either the Marxists or by some middle-class residents of Mumbai who want to earnestly believe in the delusion as a palliative from the day-to-day pain that is the city. On virtually every index of the quality of life that you can conceive, these Indian cities flop, and flop miserably. Goa is (still, but not for long) the last refuge of the good life in India. I submit that we Goans must do whatever it takes to keep it that way. The aversion to Bihari and UP fellows is not the exclusive preserve of the Raj Thackerayites. Thackeray is only exploiting the already stretched patience of the Mumbaikars. Even the south Indians - the initial target of the Sena's ire, mind you - and other relatively civilized communities in Mumbai hold these waves from up North washing up on the Mumbai shores in contempt. Why, even in the North they are loathed. Check out what the Lt Governor of Delhi said the other day. Ask Sheila Dixit, the Kangress Chief Minister of Delhi, about what the huge influx from UP and Bihar is doing to the capital city. We Goans ignore the warning signals in our midst at our own peril. I can see it all now: in 10 years Goa will be turned into an appalling, squalid swamp by the unchecked influx of ghatis at one end and the rich Indians at the other. Goans - by then, 10% of the 60 lakhs total population of Goa - finally wake up and launch sporadic (impotent) protests. Enter the Marxists, who spin another turgid tract titled "Reinventing Goa," where they tell us that Goa was always full of migrants, that it is the migrants who have made Goa what it is, and that these motley crew of Goan hangovers are fantasizing about a past beautiful, serene and civilized Goa that never existed in the first place. Warm regards, r ____________________________________________________________________________________ Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping