NEW Quest

My super-sensitive Marathi mind is in agony when I roam the streets of Mumbai. Most of the time, I could safely blame it on ‘outsiders’. I’m pained when I don’t get Marathi dishes like Sabudana Khichadi, Kanda Pohe or Misal in most of the restaurants in Mumbai and I blame it (rightly or wrongly, but safely) on ‘restaurant owners from ‘outside’. If I ask questions in Marathi in a restaurant, I’m royally ignored; waiters pay no attention to me and that offends me. If I ask someone for directions in Marathi, the Mumbaikar on the street arrogantly orders me to speak in Hindi, and I feel insulted.

When some inconsequential political nitwit insists on performing non-Marathi rituals in public spaces in Mumbai, or when Abu Azmi audaciously invites flocks of outsiders to Mumbai, I almost start fuming. So when Raj Thackeray fires back, it makes me happy to know that someone is finally taking care of my anger and voicing the concerns that occupy my mind. Because there are days when I feel like getting up and slapping outsiders for giving offence.

If I appreciate Raj Thackeray’s position, then why do I feel that he’s the biggest obstacle in the growth and advancement of the Marathi Manoos in particular and Maharashtra and India in general?

I intend to explore here the difference between the reactionary sentiments of a Marathi speaker and the redundancy of those sentiments in serving my self-interest as a successful Marathi Manoos.

I remember reading Marmik, the weekly mouthpiece of the Shiv Sena, edited by Bal Thackeray when I was in the 10th grade. In those days (around 1967) the weekly Marmik started publishing department-wise lists of the people working for the Central Government in Mumbai. The list would run like this: the total number of people in a central government department, followed by the Head of the department-?? South Indian, all 5 managers working under him- South Indian, out of 80 clerks, 75 South Indians and it did not stop there, out of 10 peons 9 bore South Indian names. Those lists made our blood boil. Marmik published them each week. Balasaheb Thackeray addressed the issue of unemployment among deserving Marathi candidates.

We are a united nation and everyone has the right to migrate and work wherever he finds work. This is a fair proposition. However, the partiality of outsiders (Balasaheb identified them as Madrasis) discriminating against deserving Marathi candidates was intolerable and unjust. Balasaheb protested against that injustice.

We were angry because of the South Indians’ plundering of jobs in Mumbai. We as Marathi speakers were angrier because there wasn’t an iota of protest against this blatant favouritism. So we all gathered to listen to Balasaheb when he addressed this issue from Shivteerth, the famous Shivaji Park ground. Thousands of Marathi youngsters like me were happy to hear someone speaking aggressively against this injustice.

Is history repeating itself? History never gets repeated in its exact detail. Apparently similar historical cycles differ from each other in a fundamental way.

The Shiv Sena was formed by Balasaheb at a time when the jobs that outsiders were grabbing by using corrupt practices and favouritism were desired by unemployed Marathi youth. They wanted those jobs, not as a mercy, but as their rightful claim.

Those were the days when white-collar jobs were rare indeed. Unemployed, young Marathi workers were eligible to do those jobs. There was a desire and eligibility for those white-collar jobs.

The situation today is exactly the opposite. Today, the Marathi Manoos in Mumbai is not ready to slog away at the things North Indians do for a living.

The MNS (the Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena) protested against the railway recruitment in Pune because not a single Marathi speaker appeared for that exam. The MNS’s vandalism did not alter the basic fact that Marathi youth did not apply and is not interested in applying for jobs in railways.

Let me share a personal experience that’s quite telling. Recently, we advertised for 100 vacancies to be filled in Mumbai and Delhi for the post of Marketing Manager. In Mumbai we advertised not only in English dailies but also in Marathi dailies. We didn’t stop at that, but went ahead and advertised in all major cities in Maharashtra in a newspaper that has a good Maharashtra-based readership.

As a result of this advertising effort, we received 1500 applications in Delhi, of whom 2 applicants were Marathi speakers. We received 160 applications from Mumbai, of whom 8 were Marathi speakers. 30 applications were received from the rest of Maharashtra and only 10 of those applicants were Marathi speakers. These posts were advertised for a Marathi organization that offered a good salary and the possibility of a steady, permanent job.

The results surprised us. In Mumbai, we selected 30 candidates, of whom 6 were Marathi speakers. (Note that we selected 6 out of the 8 Marathi speakers who applied.) Only 3 of those Marathi speakers eventually joined us. To our sheer dismay 2 of them quit the job before completing even the first month.

When we couldn’t get enough good candidates in Mumbai, we ‘imported’ candidates from Delhi. They’re now still on the job.

The Marathi youth of today is no longer interested in ‘average’ jobs. Their expectations are high. They want to become NRIs. Though they were absent at the railway recruitment exam conducted in Pune, one could see them in the thousands at Five-star exhibitions that offered advice on studying in the U.K.

Today’s Marathi youth lives in Maharashtra as a stop gap measure till they become NRIs—and while they’re here, they’re resident Non-Indians. Thousands of good-looking Marathi girls aspire to be ‘dollar-bahus’, and are queuing up for green-card holders.

It’s a good sign that Marathi hopes and aspirations are rising. One could argue over the direction these aspirations are taking, but that’s besides the point. It’s a result of the development that took place in the last 40 years in India, and particularly in Maharashtra. The economic growth of India has been uneven: it’s concentrated in the cities and the benefits were exploited and accessed largely by the privileged castes and classes.

We all want the Marathi Manoos to keep growing in Maharashtra. So we need outsiders to come here and sell their labour at a low cost. We’ll need to utilize more and more cheap labour by migrant workers for our growth. This is part of the larger equation of economic growth the world over. No one can escape that reality.

The American National Research Council and the National Academy of Sciences have estimated the contribution made by immigrant labour in the United States. The U.S. would have lost Rs. 40 lac crores in earnings from goods and services if cheap immigrant labour was not available. The strong surplus in the American economy is derived from the cheap availability of immigrant labour. Earlier, the immigrants came from Europe, Africa and Japan. Now they are migrating from Latin America and India.

Some experts have opined that Britain’s public services and the economy will collapse if the labour of illegal immigrants is taken out of the system. We must pay attention to the word ‘illegal’ here. The ‘illegal’ component of total migrant workers in Britain helps the British economy prosper. The Korean Times recently published a headline story on how foreign labour has become the backbone of the service industry in Korea. A Financial Times reporter from Madrid recently talked about how the growth in the infrastructure sector in Spain is sustained by the steady supply of immigrant labour.

Not only in the capitalist countries, but also in Communist China, where 15 crore immigrant workers are part of the growth machinery that is in place today. The migrant labourers in China work one and a half times more than the locals and yet they don’t get paid on par with locals, and are stripped of all the basic facilities given to the local labourers. Liu Mingon, of Beijing University, recently said that migrant workers play a major role in the economic growth of China. However, compared to the locals they’re heavily discriminated against when it comes to medical or educational facilities.

What is obvious from these examples is that the cheap labour of migrant workers, and their capacity to slog for longer working hours, is the foundation of economic growth all over the world. India is no exception to this rule. If we’re keen on figuring out the difference between what happens in India and what happens in the U.S. or U.K., then we can claim that developed countries thrive on international immigrant labour; however, in a developing country like India, labour migrates from the underdeveloped hinterlands to islands of prosperity within the country.

Prosperity in the contemporary economy depends on internal or external immigrant labour. If we dig deeper, we might notice a similar logic in the practice of slavery. Historically, economies have prospered because of slave labour.

Migrant labourers come to prosperous lands because developed places need cheap labour to continue prospering. Under slavery this labour was captured and brought in by force. The system is designed in such a way today that migrant workers wilfully relocate. Indians going to the U.S., or Biharis coming to Mumbai, have followed the same economic logic.

Local businesses use a standard policy of recruiting immigrant labour and making it work harder for lower wages. This is clearly more profitable than recruiting local, relatively expensive labour.

Migrant workers don’t know the local language and culture of the community they move into, and thus survive in extremely marginalized living conditions. Their lack of ‘local knowledge and networking’ helps the business owners. Latin American immigrants in the USA, Sardarjis in London or North Indians in Mumbai--all these migrant groups live marginalized lives in the place they’ve chosen to work in.

Migrant labourers don’t relocate with their families. Their goal is to save on the cost of living and sending money back home. Their primary motive is to improve the situation at home. ‘Money-order economies’ emerge as a result. The hinterlands are always waiting for the sums sent by these migrant labourers.

Poor wages, the pressure to send money home, inaccessibility to health and education services and an excessive amount of physical labour—all result in extremely difficult and grimy living conditions. Petty crime thrives in such locales. The slums inhabited by immigrant workers are always looked upon with contempt and condescension by locals—locals expect them to ‘behave’.

Locals also want outsiders to observe their limits and make efforts to ‘civilize’ themselves. The locals honestly believe that what they approve as ‘civilized behaviour’ is in the interest of immigrant workers. Abiding by their rules is the only way to live in the community.

Migrant workers leave their homelands and migrate to unknown places to better themselves and their families. They suffer the domination of the locals in their ‘new’ home. Outsiders are powerless and thus become submissive. Otherwise, there’s no reason to tolerate this local dominance.

Every human being needs his own identity, family, community and religion to survive. Within the walls of the marginalized ghetto allowed to migrant workers, they nurture their own culture and try to reclaim their identity. The traditional rituals become a way of retrieving their individuality.

And it’s not just poor, ghettoised workers who do this—even upper caste groups like Koknastha Brahmins who’ve migrated to the USA are no exception to this rule. In the States they come together and celebrate the Ganesh festival with more enthusiasm that they ever did at home. They even make Ganesha’s favourite sweet dumplings from locally available ingredients. That’s how strong the urge is to salvage one’s identity, where the mainstream culture diminishes it.

There’s a difference in attitude between those who stay back and those who migrate. Those who migrate are risk-takers. Once they migrate to a new place they demand their own space within definite boundaries. Locals are always suspicious of such demands. When migrant labourers gather in the new place or convene a public function, locals smell subversive intentions, and to some extent this is not entirely untrue. Migrants come together to negotiate with locals to secure better working or living conditions. In the eyes of locals these negotiations are like seditious acts.

The locals are thus caught up in a Catch-22 situation! They need migrant workers but they don’t want them to bargain for a bigger piece of the pie. So those who want them here are represented by the Vilasrao Deshmukhs of the Marathi world, who invite migrant workers. And those who scorn them are represented by Raj Thackeray, whose men go out and bash North Indians. The locals are torn between these contradictory desires.

What’s happening in Mumbai is thus not especially new. It follows an age-old pattern based on the dynamics between the migrant workforce and the local power structure.

What we witnessed in Mumbai over the course of a few weeks was evidence of opportunist politics. A politics that helps neither locals nor migrants!

The current situation could be analyzed through the prism of demand and supply. When the internal demand is high, outsiders are welcome. There are times when internal demand goes down, and then locals start protesting against migrant labourers.

What’s the current situation in Mumbai? Do we have ‘outsiders’ in excess? Are locals not going to suffer losses if they insist on sending migrant workers back home? Are we going to suffer because of what Raj Thackeray has expressed and done? Are we going to suffer financially? Will huge sums in profits be lost as a consequence of the agitation by the MNS?

Mumbai’s infrastructure is falling apart. Civic issues pose a major challenge in Mumbai. Its population is increasing at a rapid pace. Civic utilities are almost defunct and unable to cater to the needs of this population. But migrant workers are not the reason for the increase in Mumbai’s population. Mumbai’s population increased from 42 lacs to 1 crore 20 lacs in a span of 40 years from 1961- 2001. The population increased by 78 lacs in 4 decades. In the table below you can see the reasons for this growth in population. Migrant workers have added only 18 lacs to the population, whereas the locals have added 53 lacs. So we can conclude that the major growth in Mumbai’s population came not from migrants coming into Mumbai but because of high local birth rates.

Mumbai’s Population ( in lacs)
	1961	2001	Increase
Total Population	42	120	78
Locals	15	68	53
Migrated from Maharashtra	11	19	8
Migrated from other States in India	14	32	18
Migrated from outside India	1.4	0.7	0.7

Prof. D. P. Sing of the Tata Institute of Social Research has studied the problem of migration in Mumbai. According to him, 80% of all immigrants have jobs or earn wages in Mumbai. If we assume that 20% of migrant workers have come to Mumbai with their families, we can still safely conclude that every immigrant family has a breadwinner. If the huge migrant workforce is taken out of Mumbai, then Mumbaikars will have to spend time doing chores that were traditionally managed by ‘outsiders’. Mumbaikars will end up imitating NRIs and start doing dishes and ironing their clothes at home. The city won’t function without immigrants.

Thus, even though I get upset when some taxiwallah from North India orders me to speak in Hindi on the roads of Mumbai, I’m irritated by Abu Azmi’s mindless arrogance, and willing to raise my voice and feel the urge to join Raj Thackeray, I know very well, deep down, that it’s me who will suffer if these ‘outsiders’ are gone.

*The original article titled “Marathi Manoos he lakshat ghenar ka?” was first published in Saptahik Sakal, March 8, 2008.