Saturday, December 26, 2009

Vidarbha!!! A Sad Story......

The most discussed topic now a days is the Telangana and Andhra issue. Now , it is evident that just a fasting activity is enough to divide a state into two, but this fact came into realization to other satetehood parties only when the centre agreed for Separate Telangana after fasting of Mr Chandrashekhar Rao.

Now, Vidarbha people have been asking for a Separate state despite being well aware from ages that Vidarbha/Nagpur is having development lag of at least 10 years when compared to West Maharashtra / Pune . and when we compare it Mumbai, it is better not to talk the developmental lag. Nagpur just enjoys calling itself the second capital of the state. But to be precise and realistic the second capital of Maharashtra is Pune. The amount of industrial, commercial and housing development in Pune is far ahead than that of Nagpur. We hardly see any residential building beyond 3 floors and commercial building beyond 5 floors in Nagpur. Basement parking has also been introduced in Nagpur just a few years back, (3 years to be precise).Parking has been an issue in Nagpur despite being less populated and lesser number of four wheelers in the City. Gone are the days when we felt pride in saying that Nagpur has the best roads in Country/ State. Neighboring States like Chhattisgarh and MP have made their roads much more better planned, executed and keeping in view the future scope of parking and increase in population.10 years ago when Nagpur’s road were the best in the state, nothing has been done which could be called a step ahead of that 10 year old Executed project.

Now like every year during the winter assembly the state government has agreed to spend a cumulative package of 10000 Crores for Vidahrbha which will be utilized in over 3 years span. I presume that the package will remain to its books and after 3 years when it will be on the verge of lapse then it will be utilized in unorganized manner, which will be highly questionable. And this will go on as long as Vidarbha is the citadel of Power in Maharashtra. When the coal stocks will be extinct and other unconventional resources and Plants in Rest of Maharashtra (Like Hydal,Tidal and Nuclear Plants) become operational, then what will happen of Vidarbha ?
When it comes to the quantity of professional institutes (Engineering and Medical) Vidarbha is not much behind west Maharashtra, but every technocrat educated in Vidarbha has to go to Pune/Mumbai/Bangalore for breaking the bread. If the politicians are able enough to grant institutes for such esteemed courses then why they are unable to attract the investment from MNCs to set up their operations in Nagpur. That is because there is no recurring income like an institution when an industry grows in the locality. Alas they have to keep themselves abreast of the infrastructure provided to retain the investment.

Politicians are fighting over united Maharashtra. They want Belgaum in before they separate Vidarbha from Maharashtra. But, have they developed existing Maharashtra enough to concentrate their efforts on a new territory? After experiencing a life in Mumbai, one realizes the overheads of Mumbai over rest of Maharashtra, due to its enormous attraction. People pouring in from other states only pressurize Mumbai to adjust and to maintain the same the levies and taxes on taxpayers all over Maharashtra are raised. When interacted with corporate players one understands that they have their Marketing office in Mumbai and all other operations are run form Gujarat or UTs like Daman-Diu and Dadra Nagar Haveli.Due to high tax structure in Maharashtra, there is no big investment in Mumbai leave apart Maharashtra. People sitting in South Mumbai conveniently divert the projects to Gujarat and they do so by offering SEZs and tax relaxation.

Politicians have agenda that industries can bring a particular amount of skilled labor from outside the state, but they have to hire unskilled labor from Maharashtra only. But, when it comes to Vidarbha, I am sure that the people from Vidarbha form such a large pool of workers that there will be a dearth of unskilled labor when sufficient industries are in Vidarbha.Such is the amount of qualified people migrated from Vidarbha to other parts of the country. We just need to divert the investment to Vidarbha instead of Gujarat. And this will not happen unless the youth of Vidahrbha wants to stay in Vidarbha. We cannot wait for politicians to do hard work and corporate to come and invest on their own. We need to do something from our side. It is agreeable that we cannot do anything unless we have political support but we cannot wait for them to decide on our future.

I would like to appeal all the people in Vidarbha who are at influential position in organizations, irrespective of the fact that the organization is small or large, to attract some investment in Nagpur so that we can enjoy the benefits of age long culture of Joint family over Nuclear families as of now.

It is us who can make the difference and not anyone else…

Think about it…..