Welcome to Ashish Pal 's World

Mum­bai is India’s largest city and is con­sid­ered the finan­cial cap­i­tal of the coun­try as it gen­er­ates 5% of the total GDP. It serves as an eco­nomic hub of India, con­tribut­ing 10% of fac­tory employ­ment, 25% of indus­trial out­put, 33% of income tax col­lec­tions, 60% of cus­toms duty col­lec­tions, 20% of cen­tral excise tax col­lec­tions, 40% of India’s for­eign trade and Rs. 40 bil­lion (US$ 820 mil­lion) in cor­po­rate taxes. Mumbai’s GDP is Rs 200,483 crore (US$ 41.3 bil­lion), and its per-capita income is Rs. 65,361 (US$ 1,350), which is almost three times the national aver­age. (sources Wikipedia)

The Glob­al­iza­tion and World Cities Study Group and Net­work (GaWC) has ranked Mum­bai as one of the Alpha World Cities(Global Cities) in the field of accoun­tancy, adver­tis­ing, finance, and law. Mum­bai stands shoul­ders to shoul­ders with cities like Milan Madrid, Seoul, Moscow, Brus­sels, Toronto, Kuala Lumpur. It is bet­ter than cities like Mex­ico city, Rome, Chicago, Frank­furt, Budapest, Athens, Auck­land. And Mum­bai is just behind big cities like New York, Lon­don, Hong Kong, Paris, Sin­ga­pore, Syd­ney, Tokyo, Shang­hai, Beijing.

Mum­bai is always con­sid­ered as a cos­mopoli­tant city (a city with a pop­u­la­tion of peo­ple from sev­eral coun­tries liv­ing together with dif­fer­ent languages,customs and cul­tures) and never thought of it as Met­ro­pol­i­tant City (Met­ro­poli­ton City is a large city that is very impotant to the nation with high raised build­ing, gov­ern­ment offices and embasies like Delh). How­ever when the name of Bom­bay was changed to Mum­bai in 1995 we thought it was only to make the name sound more Indian than the mis­pro­nunced name given by British. But things have changed a lot.

Read­ing Shob­haa De blog — “Polit­i­cally Incor­rect” on Times of India. I some­how tend to agree to some extent that Mum­bai has started loos­ing its sheen like Rani Mukher­jee. Not because of the ter­ror­ist attacks like 26/11 or the mum­bai ser­ial bomb blast, but due to the Shiv Sena & MNS band­wagon who are hold­ing Mum­bai hostage to their ram­pant activites with their so called “Mum­bai for Marathi” cam­paing. This has not only harm the image of this alpha city but also caused a ques­tion on the National Integrity. I really don’t under­stand why he wants mum­bai only for marathis where in all the suc­cess and the growth which has hap­pened in Mum­bai is due to its cos­mopoli­tant cul­ture. Its the com­pet­i­tive spirit of the same cul­ture which has made Mum­bai stand out as an alpha city.

If the party(MNS & Shiv Sena) con­cern that Mum­bai city is under the stress of con­stant immi­gra­tion of peo­ple flock­ing in the city and its caus­ing prob­lem to its infra­struc­ture capa­bilites than its true to some. Gov­ern­ment should start pro­mot­ing other A level cities to start pro­vid­ing bet­ter infra­struc­ture so that one city is not crowded. How­ever on a dif­fer­ent note aren’t all big cities crowded now a days? But say­ing that the immi­gra­tion of peo­ple is caus­ing Marathi peo­ple loose its job is a com­plete mis­fit of a state­ment. In a com­pet­i­tive world if the per­son do not com­pete with other than its intel­lec­tual capa­bilites don’t increase. He tends to be com­fort­able in its own zone or more pre­cisely tend to become “kue ka mend­hak”. If Marathi Manus is not able to com­pete with the rest of the indian pop­u­la­tion than its really a prob­lem with the edu­ca­tion sys­tem out there or is it some­thing else. Had Sachin only played only in Mum­bai and never com­peted out­side would he been a great player as he is now?

Every­thing in Mum­bai is Glob­ally known be it Bol­ly­wood, BCCI (the strongest and the rich­est cricket board), multi national con­glom­er­ate, IIT powai, Bom­bay Stock Exchange, Dhar­avi slum and to some extent the Dhobhi ghat (famous across the world). So why should we bog­gle down Mum­bai with the petty thoughts of Mum­bai for Marathi. As Sachin right said “Mum­bai is for all” and it should remain as it is.

Try­ing to cre­ate bound­aries within bound­aries will only cre­ate new prob­lems. We are start­ing to grow and develop as a Coun­try. These petty things of lin­guis­tic or regional pol­i­tics will bring down the whole coun­try. We need global leader to tackle the other global prob­lems India is fac­ing. Cre­at­ing prob­lems with in the coun­try will only drags its progress and dents its image.

I started my career from the City of Dreams — Mum­bai and its the best city I have ever seen. Once you over­come the ini­tial chaos than you can start appre­ci­at­ing the city’s allure: a wealth of Art Deco and grand colo­nial relics; cacoph­o­nic tem­ples; war­rens of bazaars; and the odd spir­i­tual bas­tion of tran­quil­lity. Its the spirit of Mum­bai which I believe will keep the city as I have know “The City of Dreams” for gen­er­a­tions to come.