Promises to keep on mill land: a home right there,and a job

Bala Nandgaonkar,MNS candidate from Sewri,has the same promises: “We will press for bringing mill workers back here. I have helped some 700 youths and 200 women get jobs in aganwadis in the last four months.”

Shiv Sena candidate Dagdu Sakpal,the MLA,has made similar promises.

Over the years,dramatic changes have forced Maharashtrian families out of Central Mumbai,their home for decades. Amid the realty boom of the 1990s and the redevelopment of mill land,chawls,chimneys and large open spaces have given way to multi-storeyed commercial complexes and swanky residential towers. Youngsters have found jobs in far corners of the city,and soaring real estate prices have made small houses in the far suburbs the only practical option.

“Slowly,mill workers,mostly Marathi-speaking people,began to move out to the suburbs,” says Ravindra Bane of Kalachowkie,whose father was a clerk in a Cottongreen mill and two of whose siblings shifted to Ghatkopar.

“Banks were reluctant to give a housing loan as we had no other property to mortgage; our house was a rented one,” said M Ramesh of Parel,a managerial-level employee in a financial firm.

The politics too has changed. The Sena used to be a household name,now many in the younger generation find the MNS more attractive.

In the 1970s,when mills mushroomed in Parel,Lalbaug,Lower Parel,Worli and Byculla and the city grew into a major textile town,workers from Western Maharashtra and Konkan were led by trade unionists and socialists like S A Dange and N M Joshi. Later,the Shiv Sena took over with its sons-of-the-soil agenda. When lockouts started in the 1980s,the Sena’s Sthaniya Lokadhikar Samiti helped educated youths get government jobs.

Most of Central Mumbai was a huge Sena stronghold,broken by the Lok Sabha polls of 2004. The Assembly polls have set up a fresh battle to win over mill workers.