Mumbai and New York

Life in New York is not very different when compared to Mumbai. In fact, it is said that New York is the future version of Mumbai, except no one knows how many years in the future. The reasons why I think Mumbai and New York are similar are given below:

§ Both are financial capitals of their respective countries
§ Both are cosmopolitan
§ Life is fast paced in both the cities

There might be quite a few other similarities which I can’t recollect right now. Whether Mumbai can become like New York is a matter of conjecture. No one knows whether it is going to take 10 years or 100 years for this to happen. If you ask me I think it might take even longer, perhaps it may never happen!

There are tangible as well as intangible reasons why I believe this. Tangible reasons are for everyone to see and are usually a function of the intangible reasons. The main tangible reason which I can see is the infrastructure. One doesn’t need to spend 10 years in Mumbai to find out that the infrastructure is not sustainable. It just takes a few days. However, this can be corrected if we take care of the intangible reasons.

The intangible things I am talking about is the attitude of the people, not just of the people residing in Mumbai but of the whole country. Let me come to each attribute one by one.

This is public property and I have a right to abuse it – No one cares about public property in India. If there is something in public domain it is there for everyone to abuse. We make sure that we don’t throw the waste in the dustbin after all what is the road there for! Oh the dustbin just disappeared, seems like someone stole it! It has been observed time and again that even if the Government tries and puts dustbins for everyone to use, it is either not used or stolen. We need to stop this attitude if we want to develop.

This city belongs to my community and I will drive out the other people – I am sure everyone reading this knows what I am talking about. India is a collage of many cultures and if each one of them starts talking about breaking away there is no India left! Why do we need to have separate states for separate communities? Why can’t we live in harmony along with others? It is easy to blame the politicians for everything but it is the people’s support which drives them to perform radical actions.

I can go on and on about the above points but as Shakespeare has put it in Hamlet: Brevity is the soul of wit. I can only hope that the above is corrected before it is too late.