Keynes-Boyle law for better Mumbai

I  solemnly promise that the following will be the last reference to Slumdog in my column. I was watching a TV discussion on the film recently.

I realised midway through the programme — in which rouge-faced folks invoked economics, sociology, and Orientalism — that middle-class Mumbai was actually envious. Not of Danny Boyle but of the people he eulogised in the film, people who threw acceptance at their hardscrabble everyday conditions, and pumped enthusiasm into every measly opportunity to affirm life.

We always knew of such people, but seldom had to buy expensive popcorn to observe their lives. Take my maid for instance. Her husband has a problem, which in polite circles will be called alcohol-dependence issues. But the maid’s diagnosis of the malaise has a stony clarity that leaves no scope for moping: “saala bevda hai aur maartha hai. Mere ko hi sab kuch karna hai.” There you have it: from acceptance has come affirmation of action. She focuses her entire being on educating her two children, whom I have never seen depressed or deprived.

But the middle-class Mumbai…well, we are all too eager to let talk-TV cameras hypnotise us into exuberant senility. After the 26/11 attacks, some morons wouldn’t stop telling the cameras that Mumbai had to stop paying taxes.

It took a European journalist, whose training has made him resistant to camera-induced dementia, to tell us that the idea was not wholly sensible.

I will borrow another European’s theory from that to draw an analogy that I think will offer an antidote to our whining tendency. Indeed, the views of John Maynard Keynes, a 20th-century British economist, have been extricated from the morgue.

One of his recommendations to stimulate the economy was to have the government infuse money into infrastructure projects. In short, he wanted money to be pumped in, to prime the pump of prosperity. Now the analogy, slumdogs, in real life and in feel-good fiction, prime the pump of life with a little bit of pragmatic desire to survive.

If we want to make our lives better, we must pump in some wholesomeness into our metro.  There is absolutely no way we can do that by merely abusing the city on TV. Through non-spectacular but specific actions we can help our city become saner and safer.

For example, we cannot have better security if our police force has to be deployed to protect lovers who want to exchange cards on Valentine’s Day. It should be the responsibility of every neighbourhood, every business precinct, every college campus to evenly face the goons who break the law, and bones, to prevent us from something which is not illegal.

Whenever it becomes evident that a taxiwallah is ripping us off, it should be considered our duty to call the traffic police to lodge a complaint. When such an individual reaction becomes a routine civic action, the cheats will have no room to conduct random trials of dishonesty.

The corporate giants can also help. They have the influence and money to secure a tight inner cordon around their properties to thwart future terror attacks. But as the Lahore incident has shown us, there is no point in locking the door when the compound has no wall. So why can’t the corporate plutocrats help the police guard the crucial outer cordon?

For example, if every hotel in the vicinity of the VT and Churchgate sends a few of its security folks to the stations as volunteers, the police can be helped in spotting trouble before it becomes in extremis. These are just off-the-cuff ideas to say Jai Ho to life. You can discuss yours with your neighbours. But, do you talk to them?