Jewel in its crown??
Mumbai, the world’s second most populous city and a jewel in the crown of Mahrashtra. At least, this is what the textbooks say. Fact of the matter is, Mumbai and the rest of the state are two different worlds, two different economies, and being clubbed together is restricting the progress of both worlds. Before you scream and start burning buses in your neighbourhood however, I would recommend that you read on below.
Mumbai has an economy based on finance, IT, healthcare etc, while Maharashtra ‘s main industries are chemical, electrical machinery, textiles, petroleum and more recently software. 64% of Maharashtra’s population is employed in agriculture. The main causes of concern for Mumbai are the monsoon-handling infrastructure, rehabilitation of the slum-dwellers, shutting down hookah parlours (this has been the primary aim of the local government.. seriously..) and so on. Whereas, in the rest of the state, providing adequate financial and water-related agriculture infrastructure, and supporting the existing local industries are the dire needs of the hour.
Now, one may ask, any rural and urban areas will always be different, why single out Mumbai? The reason is, Mumbai is just too damn large, in every way. Population-wise, Mumbai is higher than 18 of the 35 states and union territories, it contributes 5% to India’s GDP, the rest of Maharashtra is 7.2%. Mumbai accounts for 40% of the income tax collections of the entire nation. Mumbai’s average per capita income is double that of Maharashtra’s (including Mumbai) and triple the national average. Clearly, Mumbai is not your average urban area.
Now, why is it a problem for these to be put together? First, I’d like to point out that every politician works for his constituency. Period. With a Congress government at the helm of the State, the funds that come to the State are diverted to regions far away from Mumbai, and the financial capital of the country just isn’t developing the way it should. I should say here that while the Shiv Sena was in power in Maharashtra, Mumbai’s infrastructure was considerably improved (Shiv Sena is a Mumbai based party). Now, the city is constantly bickering over issues with the state. The politicians living in other areas of the state barely know or understand the problems here, and Vilasrao Deshmukh’s promise of converting Mumbai into Shanghai is now part of a folklore that no one believes. Mumbai has outgrown Maharashtra’s care and can no longer be adequately taken care of by a few measly seats in the State Assembly.
Flip the coin over and for the rest of the State, the huge problem of farmer suicides and inadequate irrigational and financing infrastructure looms over their heads and yet no solution seems to be emerging. What it needs is a government that is fully focussed on sorting out the chronic spate of suicides and that has enough financial resources. At this time, a discussion of construction of yet another flyover or road drainage systems in Mumbai must seem frivolous indeed. Do you not sense this great divide that exists? And when statistics about Maharashtra are analysed, Mumbai props up those stats a fair bit and the problems that the state is facing are hidden by that push. Remove Mumbai, and analyse whether it is still the richest state, whether the GDP growth rate is as high as it seems, how well the agricultural sector is faring. Then, the gravity of the issues can fully be comprehended.
The solution, of course is segregation. Not physical, but political.
But of course this will never happen because, infused with a false sense of regionalist pride and belonging, the average person on the street will accuse me of creating divides in the state. So go ahead and call me an anti-Marathi bigot. Go burn those buses and accuse me of being a thief who’s trying to steal the jewel from your crown. But before you do that, go to Vidarbha, stop a farmer who’s about to hang himself, and ask him if he’d rather put on a show of Maratha pride or whether he wants better agriculture infrastructure in his locality. The answer might surprise you.
P.S: sources of my stats:
www.maharashtra.gov.in
www.maharashtratourism.gov.in
http://cyberjournalist.org.in/census/cenindia.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumbai
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maharashtra
A separatist argument that actually makes sense. Good one dude!
Great article! But I’m sure people in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai or any other Indian city, would feel the same way.( Stats notwithstanding)
And it would be political suicide for any leader crazy enough to suggest something like this. Moreover when they’re done with all the riots and violence that will invariably follow, there probably wont be much left of Mumbai to separate. Something we could look at is to have a directly elected mayor with wider powers as in New York and other cities.
also south mumbai and the rest are two different places
Anand, I agree with you that a New York type system would be a lot more practical. Don’t know why I didn’t think of that myself.
But about the other cities, the circumstances that surround Mumbai are very unique. The eastern regions of Mahrashtra are among the poorest in the country and the rich-poor divide in this state is truly staggering. In states like Tamilnadu however, the progress has been more uniform. TN was the first state to have 100% electricity way back in the 70s and is now riding the computer/internet wave (throughout the state, not just Chennai). Delhi is already autonomous, Kolkata and Hyderabad just aren’t big enough to exist autonomously, though in the future Bangalore might possibly get to the position that Mumbai finds itself in today, although Karnataka is better off, I feel. Like I said, Mumbai isn’t just another urban area.
And to Pranav, that is yesterday’s story. The South isn’t the home of Mumbai’s who’s who any more, its the Western region. Look around, the suburbs have caught up.
As far as mumbai is concerned it is evident that while the total direct tax collection is around rs 1,40,000 crore(that is around 35-40% of the nation) it receives something around 1400 crore for its infrastructure development. Its a crude figure but not very far away from the actual scenario.
As far the rest of maharashtra goes… we all know the maximum farmer suicides are from maharashtra… and it keeps on repeating year after year… and plus as u said districts like chandrapur and garchirowli(easten ones) are very poor…
So what can b the solution… devide maharashtra… i think no… that would ask for too much… but why not allocate funds seperately to seperate regions… like konkan(mumbai region), marathwada(aurangabad region), vidharbha(nagpur region) and two more other regions are there( i don’t remember what are they called)…
Like this nagpur can take care of poor eastern districts.
This financial division may be accepted as compared to administrative division… and the divide is in 5 parts and not two parts…