Tuesday, 29 October 2013

The Call Of The City

The call of the city:-


Migrants are often denied legal, social entitlements as politics doesn't address them, but things are changing.
At his rally in Delhi on Sunday, Rahul Gandhi addressed the bulk of his speech to migrants, as did Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit. This is unsurprising, since workers from eastern UP and Bihar make up 30-40 per cent of the population in many constituencies, and the BJP and other parties also vie for these votes. The Congress state government has splashed out on welfare schemes, and recently regularised over 900 unauthorised colonies. Delhi politics is unusual in how receptive it is to migrants, the other end of the spectrum from Mumbai, where parties like the Shiv Sena and MNS exploit Maratha insecurities and derive their strength from harassing migrants.
In order to get registered to vote, migrants usually depend on political forces that are familiar from their place of origin, and are often alienated from mainstream parties in their new places of residence.

But increasingly, as the remarkable rate of migration to cities changes the very character of urban citizenship, political leaders have begun to acknowledge the hard work and resourcefulness of those who uproot themselves and move. In Jhansi, Narendra Modi recently spoke of how it is the sweat of workers from all over India that makes Gujarat shine today.

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