trust
you have read Rajdeep Sardesai’s open letter to Mr Uddhav Thackeray doing
the rounds on the Internet. Frankly, for two reasons I
won’t be surprised if you haven’t. One, it is in English. And two, it is
extremely well written and very thought-provoking. If you haven’t read it,
I suggest you ask your children to translate it for you. Like the
offspring of most Shiv Sainiks, I presume yours too are studying in the
most elitist of convent schools.
But first, let me introduce myself.
I am just a Stupid Common Man. Have you seen the film A
Wednesday? You must, even though it is in Hindi. Naseeruddin Shah’s
soliloquy at the end of the film, where he spits out his pent-up anger
against the system and all politicians, will make your hair stand on end.
He calls himself just a Stupid Common Man. That’s what I am too, as are
the faceless thousands and thousands of us in this city. And like the
Stupid Common Man, we are a very angry lot today; angry at your silly and
immature antics and angry at the city being held to ransom by your ageing
leader and his coterie of Yes-Men.
I have tried to understand what your core values are but I
am stumped!
Let me spell out why.
Your agitation against Shah Rukh Khan, Rahul Gandhi,
Mukesh Ambani and Sachin Tendulkar turned out to be as riveting as a
deflating balloon. Nobody paid heed to your leader’s call, least of all we
Bombay manoos who you have turned into a kind of experimental
guinea pig in the political laboratory. What kind of wishy-washy,
spineless, sloppy fellows are you! Sorry, Mr Shiv Sainik, the nation did
not want an apology from SRK – far from it. They just want good,
edge-of-the-seat cricket. And the nation showed what they think of your
fading leader by making SRK’s film the biggest grosser in Bollywood. What
Rahul G gave you gentlemen was a resounding slap in the face by doing what
your leader has never done – Rahul mingled freely with the ordinary
manoos in Bombay. Sachin endeared himself to the whole country by
proclaiming that he was an Indian first. As for Mukesh Ambani, please
await the next chapter.
Now let me tell you why we are an angry lot. Your creaky
gramophone record about Marathi pride being hurt has ceased to convince us
any more. During your current tenure at the Brihanmumbai Municipal
Corporation (BMC) 35 Marathi municipal schools were shut down. Is this
your idea of pride? Rahul Bose (I don’t think you gentlemen have even
heard of him) in a recent TV interview gave statistics to show that Bombay
has already lost out to Delhi in virtually every department of
administration. Forget Delhi, it is losing out to Ahmedabad and Hyderabad.
Is this your idea of pride?
And your flip-flop about allowing the Australians to play
in Bombay has many of us in splits. If you are against immigrants, surely
you should be supporting racism in Australia! And if you are protesting
racism in Oz, does it mean that you have had a change of heart about the
North Indians? Is this pride or total Alzheimeric confusion? Yes, we are
angry at your threats to paralyse Bombay at the drop of a sparrow’s
droppings. And more important, we are angry at your wanton destruction of
public property. Your loss at successive elections is enough proof of the
adage “You can fool some of the people all the time or all the people some
of the time but you cannot fool all the people all of the time.”
Now let me tell you why some countries are great and the
others are not. This will perhaps appeal to you, if you have progressed
beyond high school. You have probably heard of a country called USA – it
is the most powerful nation in the world today. It is so because of the
way it allows the human potential to flower and flourish. Leaders – in
politics and in business – in the US come from all parts of the world. If
you ever were an avid newspaper reader (real newspapers, not the Saamna
variety), you will recall that there was a man called Henry Kissinger. He
was a German refugee from the Holocaust and he became secretary of state.
That Mrs Indira Gandhi gave him a bloody nose during the ’71 war is
another story. But let me give you an example that you would probably
relate to better. You surely have seen Arnold Schwarzenegger’s films. He
flexes his biceps and can put Salman K to shame – iconic and breathtaking
stuff for your stone-throwing, public property-destroying foot soldiers.
He migrated from Austria about 40 years ago, determined to make it big in
the US. Arnold is presently governor of California. And there are several
Indians in Obama’s (he happens to be the president of the US)
administration, including a few Marathi manoos (no, please, Al Gore
is not a Marathi manoos). And their contribution to American
society and economy is just enormous.
The point I am making is simply this: you can throw out
the ‘outsiders’ only at your economic peril. All along you have been
talking only about job reservations. Have you ever given a thought to job
creation? Have you ever wondered why very, very few Marathi manoos
make it to the Indian Foreign Service, Indian Administrative Service,
Indian Revenue Service and the higher echelons of the armed forces? It is
now high time you gave a thought to that and did something about it!!!
Now try to picture this. Bombay accounts for about 35 per
cent of the income tax collections of the country. This you probably know.
What you probably do not know is that companies pay income tax in the city
where their registered offices are situated. Now just imagine – and please
try to do so seriously because we are not talking kanda bhajia
but real big mega stuff – what would happen if the big three suddenly
decided to shift their registered offices to Baroda or Bangalore or Delhi?
Do you recall the downfall of Calcutta when Charu Mazumdar and his
Naxalite thugs ran amok there? And the ruins of Uganda when Big Boy Idi
Amin threw out the Indians? In economic terms, it is called flight of
capital. The Tatas called Mamata didi’s bluff and shifted the Nano project
lock, stock and barrel to Gujarat. That left Bengal gasping for breath.
Mukesh Ambani is already talking of shifting his registered office to
Jamnagar… I leave the rest to your imagination.
And have you ever thought what would happen to Bombay if
the film industry, what Bombay is really synonymous with, decided to move
to Noida?
Sorry for being harsh on you, dear Mr SS, but I am just a
Stupid Common Man letting off steam against your apathy, utter lack of
vision and foresight and utter lack of concern for us.
Now let’s see what you gentlemen can do. You are
controlling the BMC for the moment. And I say for the moment because I see
the Rahul G tsunami in the distant horizon fast approaching Matoshree.
So it’s time you did something for Bombay! You have until 2012. Merely
changing names of cities and roads and monuments and creating an identity
crisis for everybody will not help. I’ve never heard you gentlemen talk
of: