[Previous entry: "Project Mumbai Makeover"] [Next entry: "Bomb Was UNDER The Train Says Eyewitness Closest To It"]

07/24/2005:

"Project Mumbai Makeover"

Vilasrao Deshmukh, the Chief Minister of Maharashtra (India) was recently in the US, marketing and showcasing Maharashtra for possible investors. Hopping between New York and the Napa Valley; Microsoft and Hollywood, business delegates and cultural conventions, Deshmukh must be glad to have escaped the acute water and power shortage, dying farmers, agitated bar workers, and growing resistance of the displaced slum dwellers of Mumbai. They have had it worst in "the most industrialized state" of India.

Three months since assuming power in Maharashtra, the United Democratic Front (UDF) -- a coalition led by Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) began its assault on Mumbai's poor. Announcing the "development and beautification plan" for Mumbai, Chief Minister Deshmukh launched a massive demolition drive that rendered 250,000 people homeless by December 2004. Justifying the first round of demolitions, Deshmukh thundered, "Many people will be inconvenienced and will have to make sacrifices if the city has to develop...The situation in Mumbai has deteriorated so much that there is hardly an inch of space left for migrants". Deshmukh's words were much appreciated by the local elite who helped co-construct a rabid rhetoric that demonized slum dwellers. After all, they are in for a free ride-- they don't pay taxes, and what's worst, they are a threat to national security! Vijay Kalam-Patil, the demolitions officer proclaimed, " We want to put the fear of the consequences of migration into these people. We have to restrain them from coming to Mumbai." The migrant poor of Mumbai were to be controlled and the state could afford to forget about their rights.
Full: counterpunch.org

That's right, allow 'free trade' to wreck the rural economy, causing people to flee to the city for bare survival and then deny them a place there. Zimbabwe is castigated for demolishing slums while India is given carte blanche to enter the nuclear club.