Appams in Lucknow?

A guest post by Sakshi Gupta

I always look forward to the latest that Indian advertising has to offer on all my visits back home.  I find the ad break to be miles ahead of the main programming content both in terms of entertainment value and information on the state of the nation. This time, apart from the usual slew of kids spouting the virtues of toothpaste and mutual funds alike, I saw a new story – of four young people, from four different small towns in India, migrating to small towns in other parts of the country.

While I cannot claim to speak for small cities and towns all over India, when I was growing up in Lucknow in the nineties, migration was definitely a one way street. The only ‘outsiders’ we knew were the few government officers who were posted here. Otherwise, it was a fairly unchanging, homogenous community.  My single-minded ambition, and that of most of my classmates from school, was to find our way out of the dead-end that Lucknow seemed to us.  This ambition pervaded almost all parts of the society – from the poorest labourer to the most prosperous businessman.  No one ever seemed to want to migrate to the city, and it is not difficult to imagine why – the stiflingly conservative and corrupt atmosphere really had nothing much to offer.

The much celebrated process of liberalization in India had started in the 90s, but change was still ten years away from Lucknow.  From 2002 onwards, each time I came back home from University on vacation, there was something new in the city – a mall, a multiplex, an international bank, a new car showroom. These appeared at the time to be very superficial changes, which altered little more than the city’s already tortured skyline.

The impact of these changes is easy to see now. While most middle class families still aspire to send their children to Delhi or to other metros after their schooling, the new jobs that have been created in the city are being filled by a workforce drawn from two channels: immigrants from outside the state, and local residents (particularly women) who were either earlier not a part of the workforce at all, or were employed as domestic help (more on this second category in a later post).

So far, the number of immigrants is still low enough to inspire only some curiosity, and large scale reactionary responses of the kind seen in Mumbai and Bangalore in recent times have not occurred. However, while these are early days yet, I believe that the nature of migration here is fundamentally different from that seen by larger and more prosperous urban centres in other parts of the country, and accordingly the experience with immigration is likely to be markedly different as well.  I have a few ideas on why this is likely:

Lack of a strong state identity in UP: The states that have seen the greatest opposition to immigration from other regions have had strong regional identities with linguistic and cultural pride as the cornerstone.  In Maharashtra for instance, the ‘Marathi Manoos’ has an overarching identity, that goes beyond the fault-lines of caste, sub-caste or dialect. In UP, on the other hand, identities are highly fractured. Identification on the basis of the membership of a gotra, sub-caste, caste or village is so strong, that there is no room for a state-wide identity. The ‘immigrant outsider’ is not seen to militate against a common identity in the same way as in Karnataka or Maharashtra.

Politics of cronyism: Following on from the point above, among the existing residents, power is derived from the membership of a caste or sub-caste, and links with other powerful members (politicians, policemen, high ranking civil servants) of the same sub-group. In a state known for its absence of good governance and law and order, social capital plays an extremely prominent role. Who you know is the primary determinant of what you can get done. The immigrant, who usually does not have these deep rooted links, is accordingly not viewed as a threat by the local community.

Immigrants viewed as apolitical and trustworthy: The other rather unusual factor that could come to the aid of the immigrant is the existence of the ‘positive stereotype’.  Existing side by side with ridicule for unfamiliar religious, cultural and linguistic traits, there is also a grudging respect and trust for the outsider. Put another way, distrust for the familiar is so great, that it becomes easy for the locals to repose trust in the immigrant. Anecdotal evidence suggests that a local businessman would feel much more at ease if his file goes to a Bengali or South Indian government officer than a local man. These positive stereotypes that have existed in the minds of the people for decades since independence are hard to dispel, and this could work in favour of greater acceptance for the immigrants.

Economic profile of immigrants: The last factor that makes the nature of immigration here different from that seen by other parts of the country is the economic profile of the immigrant. Migration from UP and Bihar to Maharashtra and Karnataka is often linked with poverty and distress of the migrants in their home state. The jobs taken up by these migrants are on the unskilled and poorly paid end of the spectrum, and the resentment from locals who also aspire to a share of this small and dear pie is high. In marked contrast, the inward immigration to UP has occurred mainly to fill a local skill-deficit, and immigrants have tended to occupy managerial posts in large companies and banks.

Enough print space has been taken up by the benefits of immigration in Indian and international journals, and I do not propose to revisit those arguments in this piece.  I am also acutely aware that it has been easy enough in the past to incite ill will towards a single minority group in the past and make them scapegoats for all real and perceived ills of the local community. This has been true of UP as of other places, and each of the factors that I have mentioned above may be quickly neutralized by a single wave of irrational hatred. Nevertheless, this scenario is not likely currently and I hope, as reverse migration into Lucknow and other urban centres in UP picks up pace, it remains free of such irrational hatred owing to UP’s perception of immigrants and their place in society.