Grow, by joining the flow

Bringing in sweeping changes
MAHESH VIJAPURKAR Hindustan Times February 14, 2007

(Migrants to Mumbai work much harder than the locals and thus reap the benefits of labour)

BIJLABAI, A loquacious tribal working as a domestic in Thane's new apartment blocks, could be a development economist's delight. She cannot even name her tribe except that her "ancestor Shabari tasted the fruits before Lord Ram ate them". But she can explain the benefits of migrating to urban areas to improve one's life. Her faith in the trickle-down theory would make Medha Patkars blanch.

Government, Bijlabai expounds, can never ever effectively come to your doorstep and improve your lives; one has to work hard in an uncaring world. The more people spend, the more the disadvantaged benefit, provided the latter move first to the fringe, both in geographic and socio-economic terms, and grab opportunities to integrate. Bijlabai migrated from beyond Manmad to Thane, where a building boom now gives her family livelihood.

She advocates an economic concept where flourishing businesses let their profits, or at least their working capital, ultimately trickle down to lower-income individuals. This hypothesis holds that higher standards accrue gradually, not at the overt, immediate expense of the affluent. The unorganised service that flows from that is enough to keep the Bijlabais of this world in good stead.

Broom in hand, she outlines how "Nehru and his daughter" bestowed some land on her family, but not enough to keep them going. She, with her husband, struck out for the city, following a desperate Scheduled Caste friend from her hamlet. "Other tribals are scared of cities, but we worked packing mosquito coils in a factory. We got wages, weekly offs, accident benefits and even rewards if our children passed exams." Despite a scholarship the son "always failed".

If only he had studied hard, their lives would have been better, she says. Just when the factory shifted elsewhere, the building boom started. Her husband became a mason and the son a sweeper in the new township that sprang up. The farmers complained first of lands lost, and then took jobs as masons, their assistants or started petty businesses to serve the new housing colonies. "Their households see more money than before." The city edged into their homes in Patlipada village and lifestyles changed.

"We saw TVs and fridges in the new homes and we too got them." Everyone she knows, including her sweeper son, are better off than a farm hand and own mobile phones. "You can call me on it anytime." This outlook is manifest in the unspoken and unwritten stories of other migrants too. They were forced out of their rural moorings due to deprivation but they decided to chase opportunities. The visions of success kept them first in squalor no different from the backward villages they left behind. The braver ones decided to maximise on their gains and set examples for others to follow.

Like Bi jlabai. Like Lalu Valmiki. Lalu's father came from near Mathura to sweep floors in an office block. On his death, the boy got that job and worked diligently, starting his day early, working in nearby homes in his spare time and looked for a better life. His father had lived in a hut but Lalu bought a one-room apartment in distant Bhayandar with a housing loan and, slowly, got material comforts in place a settee doubling as storage, a TV, a refrigerator, a fan.

He sends his two daughters to Eng lish medium schools. He himself did not go to school but wants his daughters to "at least marry clerks". His chest swells with pride when they answer his phone in English. He explains why people like him from distant places do well in Mumbai. "I have seen very few locals working as hard at what is thought to be menial work. They send their wives to work as domestics. We men from distant places try to keep our wives in comfort the best we can. The locals are no patch on us. I don't even drink."

He may be generalising, but he has a point. The locals lack enterprise. At least six out of ten autorickshaw drivers in Thane are from UP and Bihar. They too have a similar explanation as to why they make it here. Unlike the locals, who sell their property because they don't chase jobs or show enterprise, the migrants have a simple rule: don't sell what you own here or back from where you came. Instead, buy. If possible, land."

If only the locals matched their enterprise, migrants would find Mumbai and its neighbourhood far less inviting. The outsiders met the demand for labour and flooded Mumbai, crowding it but also making a contribution to its GDP. They did just about anything that turned in a coin at the end of the day — run the informal service sector, including running vada pau stalls or illegally hawk stuff on pavements. They chased opportunities the sons-of-the-soil spurned and complained that their rights were being snatched away and the metropolis was being swamped by outsiders.