India needs a national migration policy, not election-season rhetoric
Mumbai finally got itself a new mayor, Ritu Tawde from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), after a long hiatus. The city’s municipal corporation is the country’s richest local body and expectations from the incoming mayor were quite high.
It was therefore surprising when, in her maiden statement, she mentioned clearing encroachments by Bangladeshi migrants as her priority. There was nothing about the poor state of the city’s roads, pollution from unregulated construction, endangered public transport systems, lack of pedestrian walkways, an inefficient garbage collection and treatment system or on how to avoid large flyover sections landing on unsuspecting citizens.
There are two ways to explain this: either she expects her statements to please the party leadership or, to be charitable, she was involuntarily recycling what has become a seasonal flavour.Jim Ratcliffe, billionaire businessman and part owner of football club Manchester United, recently made the extraordinary claim that the UK had been “colonized by immigrants” who were draining the state’s resources. Apart from the fact that his statement was factually wrong and clearly racist, thereby inviting a swift rebuke from prime minister Keir Starmer, the fact that he has no locus standi on the issue seems to have escaped his notice; Ratcliffe lives in Monaco to avoid paying UK taxes.
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