Heat and din generated by the statements of Raj Thackeray have died down as every party involved in this is benefited. This was the drama started by Raj and well supported by Congress for its own political benefit.

Electronic media provided a larger stage to enact it. All the parties involved in it are benefited. Invisible Maharashtra Navnirman Sena got the visibility and became a household name. Congress, in its own thinking, has succeeded in putting the seeds of doubt in the mind of Shiv Sena voters.

That's why the government of Maharashtra prolonged this drama and allowed Raj Thackeray to go scot-free. By playing this drama incessantly, electronic media increased its TRP ratings. Single incident was played on channels as if whole Mumbai is burning.

The only serious issue involved in it, however, is completely forgotten by everyone. Basically whole issue is related with migration and the situation created by migrants wherever they arrive. Since the issue was raised by a politician for his own benefit, it was given a regional colour. No one asked him that if jobs were not available then why people will come to Mumbai and is local population sufficient to do all those jobs? Everyone knows that the development of any country can't be equally distributed. Some areas are developed more and some lag behind. This creates the situation for migration from lesser developed areas to better developed areas.

Since industrial revolution in India started and sustained in Mumbai only, it is attracting and accommodating people for more than 100 years. Modern urban planners of India and Mumbai, however, lost sight of this fact while doing planning of Indian cities in general and Mumbai in particular. Initially it was industrial sector which was benefited by migrants and now it is service sector which is attracting and absorbing these people.

Whole society is getting benefited by these people as they provide cheap labour. But the sections which are getting benefited by migrants are not bothered about their basic needs. We all want maids, gardeners, drivers to serve us, but we are not bothered about their housing. We all want vegetable vendors at our doorsteps, cheap and tasty Chinese food of corner cart but not bothered about the legality of their profession.

Almost all urban projects are presented to middle and upper classes. Not much provision is made for the requirements of lower classes as it is not commercially remunerative. While designing urban housing and commercial projects, our planners don't consider the needs of different sections of the society. City planning has no place for vendors, cart pushers, small time traders like vegetable and fruits sellers.

There is no space left in city planning for the people coming to cities to earn their livelihood. This forces them to encroach upon the land. This situation forces squatting and develops a politician-police-bureaucrats mafia. This situation not only burdens the existing infrastructure but also distorts and disfigures it. This is the situation which creates resentment. But if there is anyone to blame for this situation it's our policy makers as they have their vested interests in maintaining the status quo.

They are not ready to change the archaic laws of urban planning and they always leave a scope for arbitrariness. This situation gives them importance as the needy person has to approach them. Laws are so impractical that almost every person has to break them and then approach politicians and bureaucrats for regularization. Even the heat generated among different sections of the society benefits these people only.

Urban planning was never a priority of government. Since independents, all governments preached that India is basically rural country and will always remain so. It is a different matter that they never did rural planning too. They kept assuring the masses that villages will become self sufficient by following a utopian gandhian model. Situation, however, kept changing slowly.

This accumulated change is visible now when we find almost all of our cities in chaos. Average landholding of more than 60% of Indian rural households is less than a hectare. Even if those people don't have any ambitions to improve their living standard, they can't sustain solely on agriculture. Most of them have to look for some alternate or auxiliary profession to supplement their income from agriculture. For that they have to move away from native place.

National Rural Employment Guaranty Scheme is no solution for this problem as it is not economically self sustainable. This scheme only provides job to such people (that too is doubtful) without creating any meaningful assets for the long term development of that area for permanent poverty alleviation. Meaningful projects can not be launched everywhere in the country hence some portion of the population will be on the move for survival.

Migration is the fact of life. Even when development is all inclusive, migration takes place. Migration of software professionals from India is an example to show the fact that migration happens even when equally good opportunities are present at native place. So even in developed economy, migration is a matter of choice and no one can stop anyone from exercise this option. Everyone looks for the better options. In the era of globalization these options can be available anywhere. Hence people don't move out just for survival but they do so for better options and growth too.

Frequent change in job by urban India is perfect example of this phenomenon. Only solution of this problem is the incorporation of this reality in the minds of our planners. Urban educated migrants can support themselves as they are financially self sufficient. Need of the day is the incorporation of the needs of rural, unskilled and semi skilled migrants in urban planning. Hawkers' corners launched in different cities of M.P. by previous chief minister Babu Lal Gaur is the perfect example of this thinking. We need many more such planned projects in our cities as by 2020 population of urban India will be more than rural India.

-m_vivek32@yahoo.com