Column

A man born in Hawaii, educated for a while in Indonesia – and whose father was Kenyan – has been given the opportunity to lead the most powerful country on the planet. Barack Obama has stressed that such an extraordinary privilege could have been granted only in America. Now Obama is not a migrant, Hawaii is a United States territory, and his mother, Ann Dunham, was a Kansas native. But his father benefited from US government’s ‘education airlift’ designed to uplift brilliant Africans. As Mumbai debated about the right of people born in Patna or Allahabad to sell vada-pav, or drive a taxi in our metro, a man with Kenyan blood was presenting his vision for a new America.

The paradox highlights our fawning-hostile attitude to migrants.

When Sunita Williams, an American astronaut, returned to earth after setting the record for the longest spaceflight for women, Indian newspapers worked themselves into a fawning hysteria. The reason: her father is a Gujarati and therefore, the achievement was somehow seen to be a tribute to India. The fact is that Williams was born in Ohio, and her mother comes from Slovenia.

Similarly, when Bobby Jindal, a US politician of the Republican party, became the governor of Louisiana, the India was again awash with the glory of an ‘Indian’ success story. The fawning frenzy sought to shoe-horn him into our country’s historic-achievement box. His Punjabi parents had migrated to the US in 1970 and he was born in Louisiana the next year. Jindal himself has never been reluctant to demonstrate his American-ness; but we Indians we need heroes, and if they are phoren, even better.

At any rate, such instances would cram a whole Sunday newspaper, a column is too small a space to describe the fawning-hostile dichotomy evident in India. I want to conclude this line of argument with the most hulking émigré success story. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of California, left his native Austria looking for opportunities and new life. Today, he is helping the state, which is home to Hollywood, by implementing the sanest policies on environment and finance.

Austria, I imagine, celebrates its famous son; but I am sure as a savant that America is proud of Arnie.

The divisive violence orchestrated by people who want to change the plight of ‘local’ residents will in the end change nothing. As the history of great metros testifies, migrants are the backbone of cosmopolitanism, the diversity sets up a pool of diverse talents and opportunities. The last two attract investments and growth. If Mumbai wants to be like Shanghai, it must first try to be like Bangalore and Hyderabad.

The capitals of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh lured companies like Microsoft. Those companies hired a lot of people, many of them were outsiders who needed homes on rent, autorickshaws, cooks, shops that sold rice and mobile phones, cars, and drivers. The value of rentals increased and dead suburbs began to sprout malls, and the unemployed had the option of becoming drivers or hardware technicians. And not a single, poor, helpless migrant was beaten. Because local people had jobs to do, incomes to earn…
raghu@dnaindia.net