Sunday, January 19, 2014

Catering To A Parasitical Minority

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is known for speaking little. But he was gushing in his praise for the new terminal of the Mumbai international airport on January 10 and repeatedly used the word world class while inaugurating it. No problem. Let the rich have world class facilities. But then why is there such callous neglect of facilities for ordinary, working people ? On the very day the Prime Minister launched this fancy project, a journalist Ullas Abraham, formerly of Mid-Day, fell from an overcrowded suburban train in Kurla in this very city and was killed.

The next day, there was an even more heart rending incident caused by the continued neglect of the railway nework. A 16 year old girl Monica More lost both her arms as she fell while entering a suburban train at Ghatkopar station in the same city. This happens at different stations as well because of huge gap between the platform and the train. Two young brothers Amjad and Naseem Chawdhary rushed her to hospital carrying her severed arms. But these could not be attached. The girl’s tragedy has got a lot of public attention because its special nature but then thousands are killed in rail mishaps in Mumbai every year because of the callousness of those in power.

By his own admission in his speech at the inauguration the Prime Minister said 0.05 domestic air trips are made in India per year per person. Actually, he was lamenting that so few people fly and said many more people should be flying and there should be more facilities.
Look at the contradiction and Mr Manmohan Singh did not seem to understand it though he is an economist. The ruling class wants to cater to this small class, some would say a parasitical class, and at the same time it is totally callous, even hostile, towards a vast majority who use public transport or walk.

Mumbai truly deserves world class facilities because it is the financial centre, the Prime Minister said. Obviously, he means facilities only the better off classes. He had not a word for the common commuter in the city. And this from a highly educated economist and a man known for his gentility I have gone through the whole text of the speech and crucial points are not covered in the media. One can imagine how deeply callous others in the ruling circles must be. And this happens in an election year. But then the ruling class is confident that it can get away with its ruse. It thinks common people are impressed by such grandiose projects and this can be a vote catching exercise. That is why the politicians brazenly project the Bandra Worli sea link also a major vote catching device even though common people have no access to this road which has become a playground for rich motorists for driving at full speed.

The Prime Minister said the terminal was a great achievement in a land-constrained city. If land is in such short supply in Mumbai, how come the new terminal has facility for parking for 5000 cars ? This is outrageous and flies in the face of the national urban transport of his government which rightly seeks constraints on car parking and promotion of public transport. But the government is doing exactly the reverse by promoting car and air travel while humiliating common people. . The fact is land is never a constraint for the rich. They are creating enough land by throwing out the working people from the city and grabbing their land through money power. Mr Singh talks of world class but then most world class airports have excellent public transport. If this airport is world class, as Mr Singh, why is it so shamefully deficient in public transport ?The state of public transport to and from the airport in Mumbai is utterly disgraceful. Thousands of workers work in and around the Mumbai airport. Facilities are dismal for them and for others wanting to take public transport. There are two miserable bus stops far away from the present terminal. So there is a total distortion, perversion of priorities.

As for facilities for common people at railway stations and on roads. A day after the terminal inauguration I attended a meeting of citizens on the development plan for Mumbai at the municipal corporation ward office at Parel in central Mumbai. As I walked out of the building on to the traffic junction ahead, I saw perfectly law abiding people were narrowly missing injury or death because of the way the traffic was being handled. Vehicles were coming at furious speed even when there was a green signal for pedestrians. I then took a long walk to Sewree station to see the working class area. It was the evening peak hour and unbelievably the electronic indicator , which is supposed to display train destinations and time, was not functioning . And this happened on a platform which had the maximum rush. Another point is accidents are waiting to happen. I saw that a portion of the platform was barricaded for storage or office space, so people could have just fallen on the tracks from the overcrowded platform.

The rich are gloating over the new terminal and an NRI proudly sent me a link to a video in which Amitabh Bachhan raves about the terminal and its fantastic works of art. There is another outrageous ad that Mr Bachhan is doing, promoting a proposed luxury city coming up on the outskirts of Mumbai. It will be one of the world’s top 50 cities. This is an outrageous claim by any standards considering that even Mumbai and Delhi trail so far in the human development and quality of living index.

All sorts of claims are being made about the art display at the airport which will impress foreigners. This again shows utter contempt for common people. Where is public art anywhere out there in our cities and streets ? If you can’t provide that at least introduce some cleanliness. Look at the area around Bandra railway station which is the gateway to the much touted Bandra Kurla financial district. It is so filthy and mainly because of lack of maintenance. No point in blaming the slum dwellers. The bus stop from where buses leave for the Bandra Kurla complex stinks because the nullah flowing behind it is dark and filthy and no attempt seems ever to be made to clean it even though the whole administration has its main offices in the area around and the Shiv Sena chief lives nearby.
Even people from the art community are questioning the huge resources spent on the art display at the airport while thousands of slum dwellers have been removed and many more face eviction. Rajeev Sethi, who has designed the art display, is known for his concept of cultural diplomacy through his organization of the festival of India during Rajiv Gandhi’s tenure. His ideas are laudable but these sound grotesque in the context of the harsh reality of India.

International experience shows that most international travel is for tourism and fun and this cannot be a priority area but that is where the priority is given. Some of the Indian tourists going abroad seem to be of a truly ghastly quality. I realized this after reading an article by the owner of a big tourism company. The lady wrote gloatingly about a customer, a rich family which was given excellent vegetarian food because it is strictly vegetarian but the same vegetarian family enjoyed the spectacle of the hunt of wild animals in Tanzania. The government should be actually banning this kind of anti-environment tourism.
And while the government concentrates on catering to a parasitical minority, it is robbing ordinary people of existing facilities of public transport. There is a proposal to redevelop the land of the bus depot at Dharavi in Mumbai. And people forget that the Adarsh scandal is rooted in robbing the BEST bus transport undertaking of its land in the prime area of Cuffe Parade.

By Vidyadhar Date from here

 

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