On May 9, while inaugurating a ‘21 st century flyover’ in West Delhi, Delhi Chief Minister Shiela Dikshit is reported to have blamed the growing migrant population in Delhi of being an ‘burden’ on the capital’s infrastructure and resources.

Leading newspapers quoted the Chief Minister as saying that “Delhi is considered to be the most prosperous city. People from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and other states come here. What to do? Yahaan koi kanoon nahin hai, ki hum kahe tham jao, mat ao (there is no law here so that we can tell them to stop coming)...They come here to earn their daily bread. But once in Delhi, nobody, be it a bureaucrat or politician, wants to leave.”

These remarks caused a furore in the Lok Sabha, with opposition members accusing her of double standards, of seeking votes from the very same people whom she was now accusing of stretching the city’s resources. Eventually, on being persuaded by senior Congress Party leaders, she apologized at a press conference, saying that she had not intended to hurt any one’s sentiments.

Shiela Dikshit’s remarks are reminiscent of Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray’s utterances against migrants from other states to Mumbai. They reveal once more, the utter contempt with which the politicians of all the political parties of the ruling class view the masses of toiling people, as mere ‘burdens’ on the city’s infrastructure, the best part of which is anyway usurped by the official bureaucracy and the wealthy.

Shiela Dikshit stops short of telling us why people from other states and rural areas have to come to Delhi to earn their daily bread. She fails to tell us about the abysmal conditions in rural areas for the vast majority of small and middle peasants who are being devastated by the entry of big Indian and foreign monopoly capitalists in agriculture. She fails to tell us about the extremely backward conditions, the lack of even basic infrastructure such as roads, hospitals or universities, which persist in many parts of the country, even as the Indian ruling class is going all out to turn our metros into ‘world class centres’. Most importantly, she fails to tell us whose responsibility it is to provide decent living conditions and basic amenities for all members of the society.

It is the capitalist system in India, defended by the Indian state which is run by political parties such as Shiela Dikshit’s Congress Party among others, that is responsible for the uneven development in various parts of the country, for the destitution of the small and middle peasantry in the countryside and the inhuman living conditions of the vast majority of the rural poor in big metropolitan cities such as Delhi or Mumbai. In order to cover up for the fact that this system provides for only a handful of the wealthy and ruling elite, but has failed to provide for all, politicians regularly try to whip up divisions among the people along the lines of ‘original inhabitants’ and ‘migrants’. This is done to make the people fight amongst each other for the paltry crumbs that are thrown at them and divert them from the main struggle against the system of exploitation that exists in India today and the state that defends this system.

Instead of allowing ourselves to be divided, we, the toiling majority have to unite and assert our right to livelihood and decent shelter with provision of all amenities required for a dignified human existence. We have to unite and fight to put in place an alternative system that guarantees us all these rights.