festivals, festivals and festivals
New week, new festival! Well that has been the case in the last month or so. The so-called Mumbai Festivals are taking place everywhere on town-side, organised by the elitists in Mumbai's high class society. I was just wondering if they consider suburbs to be part of Mumbai or not.Today Kala Ghoda festival sponsored by Times Group started. How many from suburbs would know it and how many of them will go and attend the festival? All the events of festivals take place at Churchgate and surrounding area. It takes a lot of pain for a common middle-class suburban to travel to churchgate. Especially it is difficult to find commuting vehicles at night after the main events are over. In the recently concluded Mumbai festival, the float travelled only upto Bandra. Aren't the areas beyond Bandra included in Mumbai? All the media and other elites portray Bandra and Andheri- Juhu as only suburbs of Mumbai.
Apart from the geographical bias, the other point of concern is the nature of events. The events are designed to serve the high-class society and a common-man is not inluded at all. In fact, these festivals give the page3 class just another reason to party and "to show" how much they care about Mumbai. Just a platform to show their sham love (I know, this may sound too harsh) for Mumbai. The middle-class is totally forgotten in these 'festivals'.
I am not against any of these festivals. People are free to celebrate the festivals in the manner they like. But what annoys me is the way these festivals are presented in the media. Media portrays the events, as if they mirror the complete picture of Mumbai. They are depicted as a sort of identity of Mumbai, which is exactly not the case. I won't mind, if such festivals are considered as any other page3 event. But calling them Mumbai festivals is profane.
Here, this blog draws parallel with one of my previous blogs. http://aavaj.blogspot.com/2006/01/life-in-big-cities.html, which my friend Bhagyesh vehemently disagreed. Mumbai being a big city, it very difficult to encapsulate it in a single festival. So we need differnt festivals for various suburbs, keeping the current ones intact. Mumbai needs festivals, which include all and not the just chosen few.
posted by ninad @ 10:34 pm
6 Comments:
Buddy, you seem to be missing a point here again. You obviuosly want more and more people to participate in the festival. Is this a solid enuf reason for you to say that dividing mumbai into smaller admin areas is a solution to some of our problems. Agreed that you have other reasons as well, but they all seem loose to me.
As regards the festivals, I agree that they seem to be only for the elitists, but then again having different festivals for different areas does not solve the problem. Remember why Tilak started the trend of public festivals? Although the relevance and the reach of such festivals, for reasons as sighted by Tilak himself have a big question mark in today's Mumbai, yet if you have "PUBLIC" Festivals, it is imperative that you make them reach out to the masses.
For which having a festival under a common name: 'The Mumbai Festival' is perfectly apt. The only glitch of letting the suburbs enjoy it, is what needs to be taken care of. And I think the organisers as also the sponsors are to be blamed. And I think with the coming years the situation will definitely improve and we can enjoy only a single Mumbai Festival, instead of having too many of them and making way for controversies and fights for supremacy, as is with the India Fashion Week.
I agree with Bhagesh.. I would really love to have a single Mumbai festival, which would last longer, and should be held at all the different suburbs for a period of few days. The fest should have the theme of that suburb (wherever its held for those few days). This way, the people will get to know abt the specilities of that area, the food, handicrafts, the place, the people.(Hmmm.. actually all of us Mumbaikars are the same, just wonderful!) But then, I think that would involve heavy expenses? Correct me if I am wrong.
right kedar. expenses is the key word here. i will let you know my further views on my blog, coz i have just returned from the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival and believe me, ninad has some "not totally correct" opinions. sorry ninad for that.
kedar what you are proposing, effectivelly will result in conglomeration of festivals from different regions assembled under the flag of 'Mumbai festival', which would be effectively different festivals for different regions, exactly what I proposed.
Bhagyesh seems to be very reluctant to the idea of smaller administrative units. But this has been proposed for years now. Look, one cannot group 1.5 crore people as single entity. I mean there are countries with population less than this. So administratively it's very difficult to manage it. The whole world is going for decentralisation and outsourcing. Same applies here. Let BMC do the core job and give the other jobs to local authorities. I agree it may not be the ultimate solution. But it is just one right step to achieve that.
If Bhagyesh thinks that my opinion are too naive, then look what others have to say. Bharat Raut has raised the same issue in Maharashtra Times's Drishtikon many times ( I am trying to find links on site. I'll give them afterwords). I you want to see how other big cities are administered, check out the wikipedia articles on cities like London, Tokyo, Ne York and read about their governances. Tokyo has 23 special wards and each has independent municipality. London has 32 different boroughs. Only police and transport are assigned to main municipal corporation.
So doing only the core job is todays mantra and our governments should also follow that.
PS. Even Centre is going towards making smaller states.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
here's that link of mata article
http://maharashtratimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/998534.cms
Post a Comment
<< Home