Taking pride in the city that you belong to is unobjectionable, but forcing it down the throat of others or using this pride as a stick to beat the poor and helpless is wholly uncalled for. And just what does he hope to accomplish by renaming Bombay Stock Exchange as Mumbai Stock Exchange? Agreed Mumbai has its share of problems, but they cannot be washed away by holding non-Mumbaikars responsible for all of them, or by evicting them. No major city in the world can sustain itself by closing its doors to outsiders.

Raj’s obsession with son-of-the-soil politics reeks of desperation. By directing his goons to attack outsiders, he is only going to earn the ire of the average Mumbaikar who lives, eats and goes to work with these very outsiders every single day. As for the principle of it, he should learn to practice it firsthand and shift base to Konkan, since he is a Konkani and not a Mumbaikar in the first place.

Pakistan first

Pakistan’s latest experiment with democracy is already in dire straits, following Nawaz Sharif’s withdrawal of his party’s support to the six-week old coalition government. Locking horns with coalition partner PPP — over the reinstatement of judges — Sharif has chosen a remarkably trivial issue to jeopardise the stability of the fledgling government.

His assurance to support the PPP from outside comes as little consolation, for another confrontation could bring about the downfall of the government. Sharif could have acted with far more maturity. At the same time, the failure of PPP’s leader Asif Zardari to carry his minority partner together even for two months hints at absolute political disregard for sustaining democratic governance in the country.

... contd.