Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Where do I belong?

I have thought about the whole regional biases before. May be a couple of years back when I wrote something about the affiliations and hence priorities being decided as per the linguistic abilities of the person. Fair. Whatever.

Raj Thakare recently blazed about the issues Marathi Manus is facing inviting a lot of sentiments, debate and mockery. I happened to hear the speech he made at Shivaji Park. Homework was thorough. He made statements with references. People reacted without any.

Which side of the coin is true? I don’t know. I only know either is not serving the purpose of development. And I am being specific to development of Mumbai as that’s where the major reaction has spurred from.

Area of Mumbai is 437 sqkm. That of India is 3287590 sqkm. 0.01%.
Population of Mumbai is 1.2 crores. That of India is 112.9 crores (as per 2001). 1%
Mumbai has 6 seats in the Parliament in total of some 545. 1.1%
Mumbai contributes to over 25% of national GDP. Opportunities and resources are plenty I guess.

Still the infrastructure sucks. I am at loss. Isn’t there space for everyone?

“That’s the reaction of masses dude” or are they?

I don’t think even the so called intellectual layer of Mumbai who drives the financial capital is any different. Being Marathi can mean (and I say can not does) being a sentimental fool.

For once try and set the priorities right. You are “learned” for god’s sake. For those who are not, tag of “Indian” is by default. But then again….as they say….to each his own….there are always the regional loyalties to consider.