Mumbai, the city known as the financial capital of the country, is losing its edge since the last few years. The Congress-NCP alliance, that ruled the state for 15 years, made no public investment to improve its infrastructure and its competitive edge.
Congress party ruled the state of Maharashtra for most of the time since independence and the party leaders were more interested in investing in Pune and Marathwada region, as it was their political base while ignoring Mumbai. This is despite the fact that Mumbai contributes most in Maharashtra government as well as the union government’s tax kitty.
However, Mumbai sustained on its own financially and remained the richest city of the country because the Congress-NCP leaders hardly interfered in the functioning of business for political vendetta. However, this is slowly changing since the Uddhav government came to power in November last year. In less than a year, the Uddhav government has registered 10 FIRs against various people for insulting Uddhav Thackeray or Aaditya Thackeray.
And now, they have done the biggest damage to the reputation of Mumbai with the arrest of Arnab Goswami in abetment to suicide case that was already closed in 2018. Arnab Goswami has severely criticized the Uddhav government on its handling of Sushant Singh Rajput case and Palghar Sadhu lynching case. Now, in order to arrest Goswami, Mumbai police re-opened a case that was closed in 2018.
No new business house would like to move into a city where entrepreneurs and journalists are arrested for criticizing the government. In May 2017, when Arnab Goswami opened a new media house a few months after he quit the Times Group, he decided to set up its office in Mumbai because he wanted to maintain arm’s length distance from the political-bureaucratic establishment of Delhi-NCR.
Mumbai, the financial capital of the country, is known for its libertarian culture. Although there is rampant corruption in the government of Maharashtra as well as in BMC since decades, generally politicians do not interfere with the functioning of business out of political vendetta. And this is the reason behind the fact that any foreign company which wants to do business in India sets up its head office in Mumbai. Even domestic business houses move their head-office to Mumbai when they become big.
But, the arrest of Arnab Goswami changes all that and does massive damage to Mumbai and the financial future of Mumbaikars. The city is already losing its edge due to lack of public investment and decisions taken by the Uddhav Thackeray government in the last one year adds to its misery.
As per a report by Oxford Economics, which was published in 2016, the combined GDP of National Capital Region 370 billion dollars while that of Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) is 368 billion dollars. So, the total productivity of Delhi-NCR is already more than that of MMR although Mumbai still leads in per capita income.
However, given the policies and politics of the newly formed alliance government in Maharashtra, it would not take long for Delhi-NCR to race ahead of Mumbai in terms of per capita income and replace it as the financial capital of the country.
He should be released immediately