Recently I was discussing withy my friend about the linguistic chauvinism which raises its head during elections "Outsiders are taking away the jobs from the sons of the soil." growled the Shiv Sena supreme Bal Thackeray and made an emotional appeal to the Marathi manus to vote for Shiv Sena to save Mumbai from outsiders specially the Biharis and Bhaiyas(Slang used for people from UP).The State of Assam is on constant boil over the issue of Bengalis and Biharis taking over the job from them. The recent IT boom in Bangalore has resulted in large scale migration of people from other States into Bangalore. As per recent reports around 70% of IT workers in Bangalore are non kannadigas.So the local population which has so far been famous for its "Kindly adjust maadi" attitude, is slowly losing its cool.So Deve Gowda has announced a reservation for Kannadigas if Janata Dal comes to power.Even the capital of India, New Delhi once lost its cool over the issue of Biharis influx in Delhi and literally packed and locked all hawkers of Delhi(Most of Delhi hawkers are from Bihar) and sent them packing to Bihar.

"Is this fair? Nobody thinks himself as Indian" complained my friend..

Is this fair?....Err my answer is Yes and No, both!!Actually the Indian Constitution itself has given us the opportunity to think of ourselves first as Bengalis,Biharis,Marathis,Kannadigas,Tamilians,Punjabis". India is a union of States". This is the definition of India as per the constitution of India which came into force on the dawn of 26th January 1950.The Indian Constitution never defined India as a State in itself. In 1956, the Indian States were reorganized on language basis and the linguistic identity was born thereafter. In addition, each and every State has been given the right to take necessary steps to preserve and promote its own culture and language. Therefore many States have made in mandatory to have signboards in local language and declared the local language as the first language of the State.

India, I believe is like a big joint family. There are 28 nuclear families within. Each family gives its own family the first priority when it comes to interaction within this big joint family. So Tamil Nadu fights with Karnataka for water share. Marathas are not happy with Biharis just as Tau's family is not happy with Chacha family. However when it comes to external danger like a neighbor family attacking a family member, the whole family forgets its differences and show a united stand. In the same manner, in case of an external threat, the linguistic identity goes away and all the States come together as INDIANS.

My friend told"Ok Ok.Boss How do we overcome this internal friction. Why do politicians rake up the language issue all the time?"

It is simple. The friction is the result of uneven development across India. A few States like Bihar,Jharkhand,UP are economically backward compared to other Indian States.
The job opportunities are very less there. This forces them to move out of their own State to look for job opportunities in other States. As they come to other States, the competition increases and it becomes a little difficult for locals to land up in jobs as easier as it was earlier. The outsiders who have much more severe issues of survival are willing to work at lower rates compared to the locals. And to be very true Human nature doesn't like competition especially when it comes to landing up for a job. So this manifests itself in a language issue.

Further as it happens, when people of different culture come together, the local culture of the area is affected.It gets diluted to a certain extent All this is not taken lightly because Indians have a strong sense of regional identity.We identify ourselves as Punjabis,Marathis,Tamilians etc.The regional party moves in to leverages into popular sentiment. They demand reservation for locals. And thus it moves in a circle.


However thinking practically, an influx of migrant population is actually economically better for the local population. When migrant population comes, land demand rises. This increases both the price of land as well as the rent prices. Locals add floors to their existing houses to leverage on this demand. In addition since demand of existing goods overall rises (as migrant s also require day to day commodities) It gives an opportunity for locals to increase their groceries sales. So we see new shops, increasing number of floors to already existing houses in developing cities. Further, the so called dilution of local culture is not exactly true. The culture may get diluted only in the city where economic progress is taking place not overall in the state. Except that one main City, the rest of state will have locals in majority always.


However since the sense of regional identity is so strong in India, the only solution for this is overall development of India when no Bihari/UP'ite will be forced to look out of Patna or Lucknow.When their will be centers of excellence for various things all over India just as Bangalore is for IT,Mumbai is for Finance,Surat is for Jewellary and Goa is for Tourism.

Or else job opportunities will force people to migrate in huge numbers and the linguistic chauvinism specially at the time of elections will go on.