Posted by AJ on September 14, 2008
Mumbai is awake. Atleast some of the people here think they are. That’s why few sons of soil have taken it upon themselves to protect “Marathi Asmita”. How will they do it?? By ensuring that every person staying in Mumbai should speak marathi, by beating the north Indian taxi drivers, by forcing McDonald to write its name in Marathi, by halting the movie releases of A Bachhan.
I won’t discard the whole idea as there are some arguments for it. Still it’s unreasonable from all the other angles. Let’s talk about some of the good aspects of this fight.
1. Going just by the fact that Mumbai is in Maharashtra, Marathi people should get bigger pie of its success. They have all the right to be respected here, same with their language too.
2. Marathi people should get the major chunk of the employment opportunities first.
3. Its state’s responsibility to ensure that these first citizens should be considered first for everything and then only they should consider any outsider.
All agreed, these are very good intentions. But I don’t think that they should be the sole agenda of a political party which aspires to form a government here. But limiting myself to this issue alone, let’s see its dark side too.
1. If central government is allotting 3000 times more money to Mumbai than any other second tier city anywhere in India and that too from a source which collects taxes from whole of the country, I don’t consider it as a fair idea. I have a very strong feeling that if they spend even half of that amount on city like Bhopal, Raigarh or for that matter Jahanabad too; people wont leave those cities to come to Mumbai. These people have to come here as you are collecting money from their places and spending it here, so how can one expect exclusivity in all the other things here. – Not fair.
2. I think that there are far many important issues in Mumbai today other than just ensuring that shop names should be written in Marathi first. Some of them are terrorism, food, infrastructure etc etc. I read somewhere that the number of farmers in Maharashtra going on suicide roll is increasing every year and this issue is not being addressed properly. So guys, if its only for cooking your political breads, then its our fate. If not, then please do something constructive to help a true maharashtriyan. – Anything but constructive and in people’s interest.
3. Money allotted for the poor farmers of Vidarbha, RTI has just cleared that majority of it has went to to some well off family members of the politicians. So where is justice? — This I think is an issue.
4. How can one person assume that he can stop a movie release after the approval from censor board, or stop a train coming inside approved by railways in this sovereign country? — Ridiculous
5. I heard that children of these so called guardians of Marathi asmita go to American schools in town and choose German or French as their first language. — No Comments on this.
So my request to all the citizens here will be that they should carefully think about the real issues and then only follow any political streams. The fact is that Shiv sena, BJP, Congress and NCP – they all have ruled Maharashtra in last decade with their supposedly different and promising agenda. But look at the progress state has made. You saw the examples of dying farmers, there are plenty more. So please awaken and don’t let anybody fool you on religious or regional sentiments. Use your wisdom….
