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Wanted: A Visionary

Sixteen years ago I came to work in Bombay. I was amazed by everything I saw here. The people; the terrific energy of the city; the disciplined traffic; the work ethic; the bustling night life. The incredible joie de vivre. The never-say-die spirit of those who lived here. So impressed was I by what I saw that much against my will I, a fierce Calcuttan, fell in love with Bombay and decided to stay back. Even after I quit The Times of India. Today, when they ask me in Parliament where I come from, what constituency I represent, I say Bombay with pride.

Yes, Bombay is my city. It is not just the city I live in. It is my home. It is as much my home as it is of Sachin Tendulkar or Madhuri Dixit or Ratan Tata.

But, as a true Bombayite, let me also confess that something appears to be going terribly wrong with the city. It is not just a question of law and order. Bombay is still safer than most Indian cities. Nor is it a question of growing slums. Even though Bombay's dark, lightening underbelly is growing faster than the city. Today, more than 60 per cent of all those who live here are residents of slums and chawls, which is a crying shame.

It is not even a question of immigrants coming in every day to overburden civic facilities. Bombay has a great heart and, even though it occasionally throws out a few Bangladeshis to prove a point, it continues to provide jobs and shelter to millions of people coming from all over India in search of a livelihood. Not all of them seek a respectable livelihood any more. Many of them migrate into the underworld.

With smuggling and drugs becoming passe, they are now into contract killing, prostitution, extortions. Anything that will fetch them enough money to keep their body and soul together. Ram Gopal Verma's Satya captures their predicament very poignantly. His protagonist, an underworld killer, is neither a hero nor a villain. He is just another young man on the street. Except that his job is to kill people, most of whom he does not know nor wants to know.

It is this growing amorality of the city that worries me.

Business people in Bombay have traditionally worked very hard for a living. It was this that set them apart from, say, their counterparts in Calcutta or Delhi. Calcutta was always full of laid-back and not exactly ambitious boxwallahs, brown men who emulated the white and spent more time golfing and lounging around the clubs than actually working for a living. Delhi business people, on the other hand, mistook manipulation and conning as serious business.

Which was not surprising considering the fact that the licence permit raj bred a huge number of safari-clad pimps who called themselves liaison men and stalked the corridors of power for their 15 per cent or whatever liaison men make. Their main job was to influence government policy and teach business houses how to bend laws to their advantage. Helping them along were experienced bureaucrats and politicians well versed in the art of manipulating an administered economy.

But Bombay was always different. It was greedy for money, fame, power. True, but it slogged at a frenzied pace to make it happen. It was a hardworking, fiercely driven city peopled by men and women who worked 48 hours a day and yet enjoyed themselves enormously, whenever they managed to snatch the time. That is why Bombay, as I knew it, never went to sleep. Even the movie stars, who worked long, arduous hours and multiple shifts spent their evenings drinking hard and partying as if tomorrow would never come.

That was the spirit of Bombay. Hard work. Long hours. And lots of fun whenever you could find the time. That is what made celebrities out of ordinary people. People who failed to make it big in the towns and villages where they came from. They found Bombay the city of their dreams.

What my kids today would call a happening city.

What drove Bombay was ambition, challenge, excitement, romance. It was a city of opportunities. If you dreamt big, you came to Bombay and slogged it out till you made your dream happen. Nothing was impossible. No work was too hard; no challenge was too big; no effort was too tough. There were only two kinds of Indians. Those who lived in Bombay and those who did not.

Those who lived in Bombay were the true achievers. Entrepreneurs, movie stars, society gadflies, sports heroes, corporate achievers, journalists, architects, style setters for the nation. Men and women who worked hard, played hard, refused to compromise with the commonplace. Unusual professionals became unusually successful. Photographers, fashion models, gossip columnists, chefs, choreographers, painters, courtiers, fight masters. Anything worked as long as you worked hard on it. Plus, surprise, surprise, women were never discriminated against. For Bombay never believed in sexism. If a man can do it, Bombay believes a woman can always do it better.

But, all of a sudden, the magic seems to be wearing thin. The city is undergoing a sea change in character. Crimes against women are on the rise. Encounter deaths. Communalism. White collar crimes. House breaking and petty thefts. Violent ragging. Caste confrontations. Corruption, which was always there at sewer level, has suddenly emerged in public.

None of these problems are insurmountable. In fact, for a smart, clever government this can be the perfect opportunity. An opportunity to show how quickly it can put this great city back in perfect health.

This does not require huge funds. It does not even require a revival of fortune for Indian industry, currently languishing in the bottomless pit of despair. It does not require an upswing in the stock market or real estate prices. All it requires is, plain and simple, good, effective governance. Governance aimed at correcting the malaise, not ignoring it.

But, above all, what it requires is vision. What Bombay needs is a person committed to the city's future. As, say, Andre Malraux was to Paris and Edward Koch to New York. Someone hell-bent on proving that Bombay can be set right. Not by sucking up to the builders as a bunch of stupid hypocritical culture cops. Nor by brushing everything under the carpet and pretending that life is lucky only if the pubs are shut down by 11 every night. What we need is not a pompous bully but someone interested in doing real things to change the lives of real people.

Believe me, this is not an expensive proposition. It requires only political will and thinking people at the top. People ready to listen. Not to thugs and criminals and those who pay for the elections but to the voice of the common man. Because Bombay is a city where the common man is actually an uncommon person. He is fiercely proud of his culture, his energy, his high voltage lifestyle.

All he wants is an opportunity to prove himself.

The question is: Is there one leader around who can stand up and say, I am ready to take charge of this city?

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Pritish Nandy