Slamming the door on migrants

If elected, saffron parties plan to restrain the influx from North Indian states into Mumbai and other urban centres. They feel the move will reduce the burden on infrastructure. Will this be a feasible option. DNA asks Mumbaikars and experts?

No outcry against influx from Bangladesh

Migration has always been beneficial. USA was developed by migrants, countries like Dubai encourage influx of professionals and only those with a certain standard of living can gain entry there. Restricting migration in a country like India isn’t correct, because it will be looked as undemocratic. The real issue is not migration but the uneven spread of economic opportunities. Only politicians can take up the issue of development at the national level. If there are prospects available locally, there won’t be any need to migrate. If they are serious, they must crackdown on proliferation of illegal migrants from Bangladesh and Nepal. 
—Vipul Rawal, script writer

Do away with divisive politicians

I don’t think it’s a feasible option to stop migration suddenly. Most migrants get in a lot of revenue. What will the criteria be for judging who is a local? Certainly knowledge of Marathi can’t be the sole benchmark. If you are proscribing people from entering the state, there must be good reasons. Some countries restrict entry based on work permits and financial status. But every city and country needs ‘outsiders’ who can contribute to the country productively. If we want to improve our megapolis, we first need to get rid of politicians who are dividing people.
—Mandar Lad

Create universal opportunities

People come to Mumbai striving to create their niche in the film and television industry. But now the scenario has changed with many regional language television channels opening in every state. This is a good sign and can be a lesson for the government, that if they encourage industry to flourish in each state of India there won’t be any scope for migration. When an industry opens up in a backward area, a new set of opportunities are bound to mushroom. The state governments must encourage private sector companies to spread all over India. But politicians can’t decide where one must reside. They have failed to create opportunities equally and now they are using it wrongly to escape their responsibility, by blaming migrants.
—Satish Nair, art director

North Indians can’t prosper at our expense

The flow of migrants into Mumbai and other urban areas of the state must be curbed. My logic is when there is no scope for Marathi manoos in UP, so there can’t be any place for North Indians in Mumbai. The working class and business community generates revenue and contributes to the growth of the city. But there must be a stop to the influx of North Indians arriving in hordes everyday. Mumbai will do much better without them, let’s not make Mumbai a second Uttar Pradesh. Indeed, Mumbai gives a lot of opportunities to people of all castes and communities. But the local ones should not end up suffering. They also deserve job opportunities. 
—Hemant Parab

Parties can’t curtail fundamental rights

India is a free country and every citizen has been bestowed with some rights by the constitution. One of them is the freedom of movement. Political parties cannot curtail fundamental rights for their personal gain. Mumbai is a cosmopolitan city where people come in search of better opportunities. It will be unfair and illegal to stop anyone from coming into the city. When Indians are ill-treated aboard, we create an uproar about it, but what about Indians being battered in our own country? A city like Mumbai needs unskilled labour like construction workers, autorickshaw and taxi drivers without them, this city can come to a standstill.  
—Sneha Fernandes

Expert view

Idea against the Indian Constitution

Prohibiting anyone from entering any state can never be a viable idea, it is against our constitution. Shiv Sena's claim to reduce the burden on Mumbai’s infrastructure and stopping influx through an independent mechanism is nothing but an electoral plank.

 During the Lok Sabha elections, MNS was able to divide the Marathi vote. Hence Senais on its guard now and wants to take the wind out of the sails of its rival by using the anti-migration agenda. They are vying for same votes, therefore, they are proposing that they will ensure that the rights of locals are secured first. But even if they come to power, they will not be able to apply the ‘stop-migration’ agenda because it’s against the Constitution and an individual’s rights.

Politicians always forget to ask or answer the right questions. The main concern is how are we going to generate more jobs equally within all states? The asymmetrical development has made people leave their hometowns and migrate to more developing cities like Mumbai or Delhi in search of better job options. We need to focus on how we can develop all states equally. Moreover the idea is dangerous since people even from other parts of the state won’t be allowed into Mumbai, under the guise of curbing migration.
—Gayathri Narayan, political commentator, vice-principal, SIES

Mumbai is to India what New York is to the world

After moving to a new city, at what point does one start calling it home? Almost a year after being in Mumbai, I still found myself telling people that I'm from Delhi.
Then I met a poet who told me that there was no way I was ever going to give up my Delhi identity. “That's the only thing that reminds you of old bonds,” he told me.
Mumbai is to India what New York is to the world. “And when you are in New York, you are always a New Yorker from somewhere."
Over the last one year, I have met countless young people who have migrated to the city following their dreams. Some are software professionals, others want to make pots of money in the stock market, while some have dreams of making it big in the film industry. And they love it. They like the fact that the city is so impersonal and yet personal, all at once. “It's a city for the outsider,” I’m told repeatedly. During the last one year, I have reluctantly started calling Mumbai my home.
My neighbours - a 70-year-old maid, a manager at the local South Indian restaurant and a local bartender at a Bandra permit room all make me feel at home. Before I came here, I thought Mumbai makes a migrant successful. Now I have changed my view. It’s the migrant that makes cosmopolitan Mumbai, a success. Right from the time one exits from the airport and gets into  a cab (driven always by someone from the three cities of Varanasi, Pratapgarh and Allahabad) to the time one settles down as a tenant in a house owned by another migrant, to the time one begins frequenting a food joint run by a Shetty from Mangalore, Mumbai comes across as a strange amalgamation of lives and dreams. The last stop for those afflicted with wanderlust, because not everyone who wanders is lost.