Raj Thackeray Election Special Interview with Rajdeep Sardesai

Times Now Frankly Speaking with Arnab - Raj Thackeray

The Assamese Rhino was badly mauled by the Maharashtrian Tiger!!!

Loksatta Article of Google Translate

गुगलवर फडकला मराठीचा झेंडा

'Bangaldeshi Raj' - My letter to Outlook Magazine

In response to the cover story of Outlook Magazine “The New Enemy” (September 3, 2012), 3M had sent a letter to the editor explaining the background to Raj Thackeray’s speech. And this is what they printed.

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Branding Raj Thackeray’s MNS a communal party is fallacious — given that hundreds of his Muslim followers joined the August 21 rally.

BHARAT GOTHOSKAR, MUMBAI

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But 3M would like the readers of this blog to see the original letter. So here it is...

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Bangladeshi Raj

Your cover story, The New Enemy (Sept 3), has fallaciously branded Raj Thackeray’s MNS as a communal party though hundreds of his Muslim followers had joined the Aug 21 rally. It is imperative to understand Raj’s political philosophy to comprehend his Azad Maidan speech. He believes that all states in India have become virtual sub-nations and that the leaders of Hindi migrants in Mumbai are trying to destabilize the body politic of Maharashtra, a sub-nation of Marathi people. Now Bangladeshis are adding fuel to the fire. He has defined this sub-nationality as ‘Maharashtra Dharma’. This concept was developed by various saints and administrators since the 11^th Century including Malik Ambar (a Muslim) and was finally adopted by Chhatrapati Shivaji as the founding principle of the Maratha Empire. In fact Lokmanya Tilak used the essence of ‘Maharashtra Dharma’ to build the concept of ‘Swarajya’ which in turn formed the core of Indian Independence Movement. ‘Maharashtra Dharma’ is to be understood as all-inclusive, secular and just governance that is averse to ‘foreign interventions’. Though Raj wants to restrict himself to his state, the media has ironically made him a national leader with Hindutva leanings!

Bharat Gothoskar, Mumbai

Raj Thackeray 'Frankly Speaking' with Arnab Goswami on Times Now

For those who missed the interview on air... but are irritated to watch 14 different clips on Times now Channel of Youtube, here is the complete interview.

The new 'Underachiever'

After the famous retaliation by Outlook Magazine to the "Underachiever' tag given by Time Magazine to Indian PM Manmohan Singh, Nilesh Rane's Magazine (Yuva) pokes fun at Uddhav Thackeray... Given Uddhav's ill health, it certainly looks ill timed!

GREAT BHET: Aamir Khan's Marathi Interview on IBN Lokmat

3M loved the line "Learning the language out of love not compulsion" and hopes this is not just another promotion of 'Satyameva Jayate'!

Shiv Sena's Page 1 blooper!

A brilliant ad by Shiv Sena on cover page of today's Mumbai Mirror has been marred by a silly grammatical error... 

Just one question for the "Bombay Scottish Educated" Aditya Thackeray... what is the word "it" doing in the 4th line?

Sharad Pawar is the most hated politician in India!

A Marathi Manoos (Sharad Pawar) is at the top of an All India list... 

Wait... it is the "most hated politician" list by India Today! Are there other Maharashtrian politicians on the list? Of course, Nitin Gadkari at #5 and Praful Patel at #16. Surprisingly, the most media bashed politician in India (Raj Thackeray) or any of his blood relatives fail to make it to the list!

Pandus don't like Pawar Striptease

Mumbai Police are unhappy with this Mid-day Cartoon that shows Sharad Pawar in 'bad light'... 3M is wondering why are the Pandus doing Vinayak Mete's job?

Google petition in Saamana Newspaper

Saamana Newspaper carried information about my Google petition. But there are some factual errors in the article:

·        The Arabic petition is for including the language in PS3 browser and not in Google

·        The URL given is www.onlinepetition.com when it should have been www.petitiononline.com/gmarathi!

Mumbai, Parallel City

Today's Op-ed by Girish Kuber in Indian Express is the best description of the plight of Mumbai!

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/mumbai-parallel-city/817603/0

That there is little governance in Mumbai is quite an understatement. In reality, there is no governance. A huge, ever expanding mass of humanity, cramped in a tiny, narrow expanse of land makes it a low-cost, high-impact model for terrorist groups. It is no coincidence that terrorists continue to strike this megalopolis almost at will. Time and again, it has been proved that cities with dilapidated infrastructure and poor civic mechanisms suffer more during such attacks. And so the common, hapless Mumbaikar is seen to be a low-risk target for even amateur terror outfits.

The root cause of all of Mumbai’s ills is its uncontrolled growth and the city’s ability to attract the poor from all corners of the country, despite all its odds. The city, in every aspect of life, has problems of plenty. At present, it houses more than two crore people of which more than a third, around 85 lakh, live along roads, railway tracks, etc. They have no homes. Every day, Mumbai witnesses some 65 lakh people crisscrossing the city suffocatingly crammed into local trains in order to make their living. A little over than half of these use city buses every day. It is like a small-size European nation moving from this end to that end every day. A lot has been written, talked about Mumbai’s never-say-die spirit. The much-hyped Mumbai Spirit is nothing but the city’s helplessness that it is being forced to be always on the move. The poor Mumbaikar has no choice but to keep moving. Else, he faces the danger of being left behind by the world speedily moving around him.

The city, which has an annual budget bigger than more than half-a-dozen Indian states and that houses double the number of people than do some European nations, has been politically orphaned for quite some time. Political establishments of all hues milked Mumbai to the hilt. At present, there are 19 agencies that run the city. For example, for the relatively routine job of maintaining roads, the city is divided among four agencies. It has that faceless, inherently corrupt government department called the PWD. Then there is the MSRDC, a loss-making state-owned corporation created to build and maintain roads. Add to it the MMRDA, a city planning authority, along with the local municipal body.

The same goes for the machinery expected to handle law and order. The state has a director general of police who cannot call the shots in its state capital, Mumbai. Because there is another body called the Mumbai Police whose chief competes with the state police chief for supremacy. Even within the Mumbai Police, the chief of its intelligence wing has been accorded near equal status to that of the Mumbai police commissioner. As a result, he usually does not like to report to the city police chief. Not to mention newer agencies such as the Anti-Terrorism Squad, Force One, Quick Response Team, etc. Remember how too many cooks spoil the broth?

As far as planning is concerned, the city has its own local self-government, the BMC. For the last two decades, it has been controlled by the Shiv Sena, which propagates its sons-of-the-soil prescription. Since the Congress has successively failed to capture the cash-rich BMC, it created another body called the Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority, or MMRDA. It is controlled by the state government where the Congress has had an uninterrupted reign. Through the MMRDA the Congress gained access to the city’s resources and tried to have its finger in the pie.

At the state level, Maharashtra has two parallel governments. One led by Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan and the other by NCP chief Sharad Pawar’s nephew, Deputy CM Ajit Pawar. As per the alliance arrangement, the crucial home and finance ministries are with the NCP which has a one-point agenda: to unseat the Congress wherever possible. In this game of one-upmanship, any politician doing anything good for Mumbai faces the danger of being painted anti-poor in his home constituency by the rival. For many, to be called pro-Mumbai is shorthand for being anti-poor. The irony is that almost all important politicians have homes and families in Mumbai, their kids make best of the city’s opportunities but none dares to take steps to improve its infrastructure. This dichotomy results in Mumbai having ministers with a rural mindset who are ill-equipped to tackle modern, metropolitan sensibilities. As a result, state Home Minister R.R. Patil, who belongs to Satara in the rural heartland, ends up acting as a moral cop.

On the other side of the political spectrum, Mumbai has the Shiv Sena, the BJP and that new kid on the block, the MNS. The Sena, though it espouses Marathi causes, hasn’t grown much politically. It continues to handle the issues affecting the city in a manner that smacks of extortion. Its offshoot, the Raj Thackeray-led MNS, has yet to prove that it can do any good than beating helpless pani-puri vendors on the street. Senior member of the saffron camp, the BJP, have willingly allowed the Sena to appropriate its political space and, as such, the party has reduced itself to a level of insignificance in the city.

The common Mumbaikar sees one universal factor binding these different political forces. That all are a part of the contractor-driven economy. More than the needs of the people, the Mumbai economy serves an all-pervasive entity called the contractor. This class, that has strong bonds with politicians, has large stakes in the city and can go to any extent to safeguard them. With a large swathe of the poor around, there is no dearth of lumpens who can be groomed for criminal activities. Although Mumbai prides itself in its service sector, the politician-contractor nexus has failed to create a hospitable climate for the service industry. A sizeable number of small-scale industries in Mumbai have downed their shutters over the years because of the poor work culture and absenteeism and a distorted idea of unionism.

Mumbai has grown into an unmanageable beast. The dinosaur and mammoth faced extinction not because there was nothing left to feed them, but because of their unwieldiness. The same may hold true for Mumbai.

The writer is executive editor of ‘Loksatta’, girish.kuber@expressindia.com

पानिपत पराक्रमाची शौर्यगाथा

Star Mazha's program that traces the journey for Marathas from Udgir to Panipat to fight Ahmed Shah Abdali's Afghan troops!

'Chatur Ramalingam' is actually Marathi

'Chatur Ramalingam' of 3 Idiots fame is actaully a 'Marathi Mulga' from California!

Marathi take-off

After MNS decided to flex its muscle in sky, Hindustan Times editor is upset that a ‘Regional Language’ is thrust on him!

3M would like to ask him a few questions:

• Is he aware that there are more Marathi speaking people in this world than those who speak French or Italian?
• Why does he not get angry when announcements are made in Tamil when he lands in Chennai?
• Why should 3M not sue Jet Airways for not serving Non veg food on flights to Gujarat?
• Has MNS said that ‘only Marathi’ should be used? In that case 3M will join the protest!

Hindustan Times is trying to be a TOI Me-too in Mumbai by imitating later’s Anti Marathi policy… 1 2 3 4 5

Saffron Tunes

Radio One’s Janvalkar… Radio Mirchi’s Vaingankar… Big FM’s Gupte

Marathi Manoos at the helm of affairs in all the top Radio Stations in Mumbai… But only a T-KICK ensures that they sing to Marathi Tunes… 3M fails to understand as to why Shiv Sena took more than a decade to realise that these private FM stations are not playing Marathi Songs?

आता मटामटा...

As pointed out by a reader, Maharashtra Times also carried the Belgaum Dispute Map in yesterday's edition without acknowledgement...

... and DNA today!!!

... Sakaal and Prahaar are copycats too!