The other day while I was getting some photocopies done at a shop, I got into conversation with the shopkeeper, a retired old man from Pune. It started with weather and I told him that I liked Pune for its moderate weather as compared to Delhi with its extreme temperatures. He said, “You are from the north?” and I said, “Oops, I shouldn’t have mentioned especially with so much hate propaganda going on against the north Indians in Maharashtra.” He smiled and told me that Marathis have had it coming for them for quite sometime now. They don’t want to earn a hard day’s living. They want easy money; they close down their shops at 2:00 PM and open at 4:00 PM (it had struck odd to me too when I first came to Pune; 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM being peak shopping hours); they just want to lease out their property and live off the monthly rents and are perfectly content with it; local labourers asking for more money for putting in less hours of work.

He pointed out, on the other hand, labourers from north India are much more hard working and much cheaper than local ones. He sneered and said, “Now what are these factory owners going to do, what with local labourers asking three times more money without the guarantee of returning to work the next day?” While he was talking I remembered a similar conversation I had with one of my friends from Mumbai few years ago. She was expressing the same sentiment about Maharashtrians. She said in Maharashtra one can find Maharashtrians working in government offices like post offices; banks; municipal corporations etc., and they are happy working in such secure jobs, while people from other states have come and grabbed best opportunities and accrued wealth for themselves.

Considering the sentiments of the common man here, the problem is not imagined but a real one and the solution lies not in hate propaganda and violence; the politicians are using this issue as a political gimmick to serve their own ends. It is a social problem that needs to be dealt with care and sensitivity, and measures should be taken that appease the Maharashtrians and at the same time not alienate ones coming from outside Maharashtra.

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