Outbursts in Mumbai create fear in Uttar Pradesh

MNS chief Raj Thackeray may not have directly threatened the migrants from Uttar Pradesh this time yet a fear psychosis was clearly palpable among the families of the migrants.

A large number of people from UP, especially from the eastern districts of Azamgarh, Jaunpur, Mau, Gorakhpur and other places live in Mumbai, Pune, Nashik and other industrial centres in Maharasthra. While no noticeable exodus has been witnessed among the migrants from UP, the members of their families back home are “anxious” and “concerned” about their safety.

“We are certainly concerned about the safety of our children  In the past also there had been attacks on them after similar outbursts from Raj Thackeray,” said Ashok Pandey, whose younger brother works at a private factory in a Mumbai suburb.

In 2008, there was exodus of people after a youth was killed by a mob on a local trian.
 “It is all politics and all sides are trying to inflame the passion for political reasons,’’ says K Prasad, who hailed from UP’s Ballia district and has been living at Pune for the past several years.

Similar views were echoed by another migrant P S Tewari, who works as an engineer in Mumbai and has been living there for over two decades.

“The politics of fragmentation by regional political parties and the silence of the national parties have pushed our society into a danger zone’’, says noted social scientist Prof  Rajesh Mishra, a faculty at the Department of Sociology at University of Lucknow. “An attempt is being made to define Maharashtra as a nation,’’ Prof  Mishra told Deccan Herald.  

Prof  Mishra said that this kind of divisive politics would “push our society from a problem society to a crisis society” and added that the “integrative forces are becoming weaker and divisive forces are getting stronger”.

Mishra, however, sees a ray of hope. For him, the solution may lie in the economic forces.
“Economy may play an integrative role and blur the ethnic identities in the days to come,” he opines.

A little spark could well trigger an exodus, feel a majority of the families whose members have been earning their living in Maharashtra.

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