No fair

Oddly,taxi drivers dont just drive cabs,they also bear the burden of representation. Lets say youve just flown somewhere. Airports are the same anywhere; so your first real impression of the city is the taxi in from the airport. Then theres the fact that conversations with a cab driver are as close as most visitors to a place get to talking to people who actually live and work there about the things that matter to them. Even residents tend to have their view of their town massively influenced by their opinion of the average taxi driver: is he argumentative? Efficient? Late? Think of the reaction across Mumbai to the episode of the 1980s Doordarshan serial Rajani in which the feisty heroine takes on a refusenik cab driver.

Which is why Mumbais latest little bit of nativist madness invoking provisions that the drivers of its famous fleet of black-and-yellows read and write a local language,and that they prove they have lived in the city for 15 years is more than just another silly order. First,of course,this would further hamper migration to the city in a country in which such migration is something we have to assist and direct,not control. In cities everywhere,economic migrants start off driving cabs: in Delhi,a cab stand is often the first home of migrants from villages in the North; and the idea of hopeful Indian cabbies in New York has been integral to a dozen Hindi films. Such jobs are a good fit for many reasons: the long hours that new migrants will be willing to put in,the way in which driving a cab grants them familiarity with this new place in which theyve found themselves.

But,even more than that,this demonstrates how the idea of Mumbai is under attack from Maharashtras politics. The old concept of the great,accepting metropolis is precisely what the various Senas,and now the ruling Congress-NCP coalition,have been chipping away at. But,even as people increasingly self-selected themselves into segregated neighbourhoods,and Marathi signs became another form of protection money,one of the most sacred of Mumbais public spaces remained immune. Now a hopelessly non-performing government could be changing that.