The angst of outsiders

What is happening in Maharashtra -isolating the outsiders (now North Indians) is nothing new, the danger is audacity of few individuals and later media mileage. This blogger wonders how cameramen reached the spot during the violence. Thankfully though it is contained to a large extend but they have been repeating images even now to stoke passion. Exemplary punishment should be given to the perpetrators of such crimes. Money should be charged from individuals for damaging public and individual property, these actions should be given publicity as a deterrent. The mob generally commits heinous acts since they get anonymity, identifying individuals from video footage and punishing them should be shown to people. The feeling now among common people is that anyone can commit anything and get away with it.

At a certain level every individual in a city at one point does feel to be an outsider. But the alienation is acute among migrants particularly at the lower strata. There is lots of space for people at higher strata since money cushions the impact and the contribution is mainly at idea level, leading to more vibrancy in most cases. Further they have choices and migration is not for survival. At lower level of society it is survival and that puts immigrants directly in competition with inhabitants to fight over depleting resources and opportunities. This tragic situation is what is exploited by vested interests in the name of religion and parochialism. These fault lines are consolidating in most metros cities, the danger is very real. Comparing Mumbai with New York is ridiculous, for one Mumbai has lots of poor people living in abject condition as is the case in most big Indian cities.

Inhabitant’s angst of loosing the hold over their home city is also very real. With native culture- tradition and language being made subservient to increasing aggressive alien culture can be unsettling. This also observed in other parts of the world (even richer societies) mutating sometimes into xenophobia. Sentimental association with the home city is emotive and therefore can be easily be directed against immigrants who could be seen as cause of all problems.

But the tragedy of immigrants particularly from poorer sections (also people who may be underemployed, as also those who don’t have skills for Market oriented jobs like farmers, artisans and so on) to cities is wrenching. It is uprootedness of colossal proportional, it is dislocation of an individual. Then there are humiliations, prejudices, biases and cheatings -it is always easy to take an outsider for big ball before he/she learns the trick of the trade, sometimes the mistakes are so grievous that they may never come out of it (inhabitants have maneuverability space). One of the first thing people learn is to compromise, it is a process of dehumanization, alienation, marginalization, pitfalls are many they end up living in most inhuman and degrading surroundings. Limited resources add to other problems like lack of sufficient nutrition and proper medical attention and so on. They have to face the brunt of all problems.

This blogger knew lots of youngsters at personal level who came from Bihar/UP to study or find some job after graduation in Delhi (in early part of my stay here sometimes we used to pool money for monthly get together). It is quite an uphill task and odds are really stacked against them. It also put question mark on the employment and educational facilities provided by UP/Bihar government (it is not really about these two states there are youngsters from Uttranchal, HP…and within States who go to big cities for better prospects).

As an individual this blogger feels the public space has reduced significantly in recent times. Animosity towards migrants, suspiciousness of cheating (as in trains), afraid of terrorism (therefore intrusion into privacy of outsiders), wariness towards strangers….has lead to increasingly siege mentality among people in public space. So for an outsider it becomes much more difficult.

Raj Thackerey though has successfully exploited the situation. One shouldn’t be complaining since that is what any human in Market driven globalized world is supposed to do. People particularly poor immigrants will face miseries some may even get maimed or killed that also is normal, when there is power struggle people will have to pay the price (ditto, for somebody’s Coke-Pepsi many will have to give up their drinking water. The nature and intention is same the context is different). To be fair to Raj he is a political outsiders so he has to do some stunts to break in (quite interestingly in recent times as they talk of competence and merit….parents are quite viciously promoting their children whether in politics, art, business…there is a huge stampede to promote children). He though has the all important surname (if he was Raj Dongre instead of Raj Thackerey he would have been bundled out at the first instance). Few decades from now he would have positioned himself as a matured leader. The metamorphosis is complete!!.

The exploitative nature of human relations is as old as human history. It is only that evolution of societies has created new fault lines. The insider-outsider based on geography is the most vicious variety.