the bihar end of the problem

if you ignore raj thackeray's ugly tactics, you'd realize that he's actually less jingoistic than laloo prasad yadav- yadav routinely siphons away whatever major, new investments that are being made by the railways to chhapra or madhepura or other places in bihar. mr.yadav and mr.paswan before him, together, have also ensured that the overwhelming majority of new jobs in the railways, in the last one decade, went to job seekers from bihar. if mr.yadav thinks national investments should serve regional interests, what's wrong with mr.thackeray advocating that regional investments should create regional jobs?

why can't young people from bihar find more jobs without a) cornering an undue portion of the jobs in the national public sector, b) or migrating to mumbai or other prosperous cities and regions? and why can't mumbai stop hosting migrants if its infrastructure can't accommodate them? the usual answer from the liberals, that we're a nation where all people have the right to work anywhere solves neither the biharis' problem nor the mumbaikars'. but that's the facile line most of the media seems to take when dealing with these issues. like sagarika ghose in this article, for instance:

Three years ago when Raj Thackeray broke away from the Shiv Sena and launched his own Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, he promised to create a modern version of the Sena. Three years after being in the political wilderness,after being wiped out in the Mumbai municipal polls, Thackeray has realized that modern politics is hardly ever successful in a modern economy.Instead, the best way to win votes in a reforming economy is not to join hands with the forces of change but with regionalists and cultural chauvinists, who are unwilling to compete in the open economy, but instead want the benefit of other peoples' hard work by simply the privileges of their birth in a particular state. (italics mine)

an open economy. other people's hard work. privileges of their birth. she sounds so much like a commenter on my previous post:

Ramadoss - the champion of SC/ST and OBCs (aka the incompetents who hanker for handouts) subverted the Parliament to satisfy his ego, and on the Supreme Court striking down his subversion, he is shameless to not want to resign.

the incompetents who hanker for handouts.

if india were an open economy, paddy and wheat farmers in the country would right now be cashing in on the upward trend in world grain prices. and foremost among them would have been farmers from u.p., and bihar, states with the best access to large, perennial sources of water. if india were an open economy, the mumbai metro would've been built more than three decades ago when it was first proposed.

if india were an open economy, young people from bihar would find more jobs without a) cornering an undue portion of the jobs in the national public sector, b) or migrating to mumbai or other prosperous cities and regions.

if india were an open economy mumbaikars would follow economic logic and respect the value of the cheap labour provided by the migrants more.

why don't the indian liberals or the media look at the bihar end of the mumbai problem? or dig deeper into the cultural and political issues involved? or examine closely the economics of the problem? it's easy to dismiss thackeray or the pro-kannada activists as regionalists and cultural chauvinists: but karnataka has been trying to implement the three language formula in the country much more sincerely than many states in the north and maharashtra produces more ph.ds in hindi than, possibly, some hindi speaking states.

does the problem actually begin or end with raj thackeray and other such almost filmi villains? or are the indian media and the liberals incapable of looking any deeper?