A town where even school dropouts are builders! - By Zeeshan Shaikh - The Free Press Journal, Mumbai, INDIA

A Muslim ghetto town, Mumbra, in the suburb of Mumbai could have been a model town, if the Muslims had not been discriminated against by the communal government of Mumbai City and Maharashtra State. Hundreds and thousands of supposed 'illegal' buildings all over the city and suburbs of greater Mumbai, are made legal through the very outset by the authorities through under the table exchange. However, for Muslim entrepreneurs, even that route is closed. So there remains no alternative for the so-called dropout 'builders' other than to take the 'criminal' routes. They are forced to remain outside of the legal and official framework. Mumbra could have been a planned city, just like Sharad Pawar's LAVASA. But Muslims have no political clout and no access to bank finances. They are forced to work with whatever means available to them, to make a living. At least they are getting employment for themselves and their workers. If they had finances available like the Bohra communities' Bhendi Bazaar Project, they could have come out with flying colors with their flair for entrepreneurship. The politically correct analysis in Free Press Journal, by Zeeshan Shaikh, falls short of taking the wider and deeper issues that surrounds the upcoming of a new ghetto in the suburb of Mumbai city. The disaster of the crash of a 7-story building could have been avoided if the authorities had cooperated with the genuine need of hundreds and thousands of families uprooted in Mumbai riots. Since Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation is still ruled by the same Shiv Sena, that had unleashed the post-Babri riots of Bombay, the gulf between the two communities is still wide and glaring. Muslims are never given an inch lest they catch up and make a success of their existence in the burgeoning city of Mumbai.

The situation can easily be compared to the civil disobedience movement of Mahatma Gandhi, who had realised that without an anti-British movement, Indians will never get their  rights. Since all doors to legitimate progress and survival is closed to Muslims, the wider implication of this uncharted and unplanned movement of 'Civil Disobedience' against a institutionally adverse government, has to be recognised as such and the ruling oligarchs and civic administration should shed their prejudices against their Muslim compatriots and treat them at equal footing with all others.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

<ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com>

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http://freepressjournal.in/a-town-where-even-school-dropouts-are-builders/

THE FREE PRESS JOURNAL - MUMBAI

Mumbai    April 24, 2013 12:07:59 AM | By Zeeshan Shaikh

A town where even school dropouts are builders!

Mumbra : It is hard to believe that in Mumbra there are 25 builders below the age of 20 who are flourishing in the illegal construction industry and are also living a lavish lifestyle by selling flats constructed in a few months. Most of them are school or college drop outs and joined the race of becoming rich to fulfill their increasing demands.

Mumbra could be the only city in India, where construction industry has builders below the age of 20 in huge numbers. “In Mumbra everyone wants to grow as fast as possible and Mumbra is the only city in the state where a person can become a builder by just investing Rs 2 lakh to Rs 5 lakh,” said Hussain Syed, a theatre artiste and a resident of Mumbra.

According to Syed, there are around 250 builders who are working full-time in construction business and there are more than 700 of their accomplices who are working for them as a sleeping partner. Among these 250 odd developers, around 25 individuals who are flourishing in the illegal construction business and their age is below 20, added Syed.

“These under-20s youth do not belong from a well to do family and most of them are school or college drop outs. At some point of time these youths were handed some cash by their family members and they selected the easiest path of constructing illegal towers in the vicinity”, said Syed.

One of these builders, Feroze Khan, 19, who has a light growing moustache on his face every evening visits Sahil Hotel, located on the main road of Kausa, with his white Honda Activa. While speaking to FPJ Khan said, “I was not interested in studies due to which I flunked my SSC board exams. My father after seeing my result informed me that he had saved Rs 3 lakh for my further studies, as he wanted me to become an engineer”. After observing the construction boom in the vicinity, Khan requested his father to allow him to enter the construction business with Rs 3 lakh in 2009, when he was just 15-year-old. Till 2013, Khan had developed more than five illegal buildings with three ongoing illegal construction which is stopped after the mishap.

According to Khan, “It is easy to enter the illegal construction industry of Mumbra, as these developers have a famous roadside restaurant, Sahil, which is famously known as the junction where deals worth of crores take place in few minutes. Every evening the G+1 restaurant, owned by a local corporator, is full of builders finalising their deals, politicians waiting for their share, contractors waiting for their money, TMC officials are also bribed at the same place and even police officials also halt there to take their envelopes full of cash.

“In the words of K P Naik, suspended senior police inspector of Diager police station, Sahil Hotel, is a Vidhan Bhavan of builders,” said a police official requesting anonymity.

“If anyone wants to enter the illegal construction industry of Mumbra, the locals advise him to start visiting Sahil Hotel and pay bills, bring pan, buy a cigarette for big developers,” said Khan.

“It is the most easiest and safest way to catch hold of one group from Sahil and flourish in the market of construction. Even I found a group in Sahil hotel who were ready to take me as a partner with Rs 3 lakh,” added Khan.

“What great would I have done after becoming an engineer, I would be employed under some firm working nine to five for some pennies. Today more than 150 people are employed under me and the construction business is worth doing some other business,” said Khan.

Apart from Sahil Hotel, these under-20 youths have discovered a small restaurant, Sugar and Spice which is a stone’s throw away from Sahil. Luxurious cars and bikes are parked every evening at Sugar and Spice, where these youths show off their power to each other with their accessories and clothes 

every day.

Ehsaan Dalvi, a professor and a resident of Mumbra said, “These youths are not at all interested in education and are looking for easy money by any means. The illegal construction industry provides them the way to earn easy money, and they are completely disabled to approach municipal corporation for legal construction work”.

Khan and his bunch of business partners who like to spend their nights in Konkan Palace or Bhiwandi Dhaba hardly showed any remorse over the death of 74 people but were in a worried condition for their blocked investment.

Zeeshan Shaikh

Life in America Unraveled for Brothers - By ALAN CULLISON and PAUL SONNE in Moscow and JENNIFER LEVITZ in Cambridge, Mass.- Wall Street Journal

Was that a FBI set-up? If the elder brother was under constant surveillance by the FBI, where were the FBI men, when the brother or brothers were able to assemble their crude bombs?

Life in America Unraveled for Brothers

By ALAN CULLISON and PAUL SONNE in Moscow and JENNIFER LEVITZ in Cambridge, Mass.

Where did the alleged bombers of the Boston Marathon come from? What were their career aspirations? What can we learn from their online media presence? WSJ's Jason Bellini has "The Short Answer."

The two Chechen brothers accused in the Boston Marathon bombing set about building American lives after coming to the U.S. about a decade ago.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26 years old, became a successful Golden Gloves boxer. His younger brother, Dzhokhar, 19, was a nursing student and became an American citizen just last year, on Sept. 11.
But a close examination of the Tsarnaev family's life in the U.S. shows a hopeful immigrant trajectory veering off course.
For nearly 24 hours, a dragnet of cinematic proportion played out in Boston's eerily quiet streets after the two brothers were branded as the architects of Monday's Boston Marathon bombings. A gunbattle in Watertown, Mass., left Tamerlan dead by early Friday morning, and police put Boston on lockdown after Dzhokhar eluded capture. Later Friday, however, he was apprehended.

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On Friday, details from their lives emerged through interviews with neighbors and relatives, and from their online activities. Acquaintances recalled the brothers as strong students and avid athletes. They left few clues suggesting they would be capable of the gruesome acts the police say they committed.
But the patriarch of the family, a talented auto mechanic named Anzor Tsarnaev, struggled to make a living. Tamerlan, his eldest son, failed to make a career out of boxing, dropped out of community college for lack of money and struggled to find work.
Living on public assistance in a multifamily house in Cambridge, the family began to fray, friends said. The parents separated. Anzor Tsarnaev returned to Russia, battling illness.

Along the way, Tamerlan's attitude seemed to sour. "I like the USA," he told the Lowell Sun newspaper in 2004 while competing in a boxing tournament shortly after arriving in the U.S. "America has a lot of jobs." But a caption accompanying an online photo of him a few years later reads: "Originally from Chechnya, but living in the U.S. since five years…I don't have a single American friend, I don't understand them."
Ruslan Tsarni, an uncle of the two brothers, told reporters outside his Maryland home Friday that his nephews were "losers" who were unable to settle into American life "and thereby just hating everyone who did." He said he didn't think there was an ideological motive. "This has nothing to do with Chechnya," he said. He also indicated there was a rift between him and his brothers. "It's personal," he said, "I didn't like them."

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Tamerlan Tsarnaev, at right in photo, in a 2009 Golden Gloves boxing match in Salt Lake City.

The boys' mother said in a television interview with the Russian state-run news channel RT Friday night that anyone calling her son a loser is a loser himself. "I am really sure, like I am 100% sure, that this is a setup," Zubeidat K. Tsarnaev said. She also said that she had been contacted by the FBI about her older son, before Monday's deadly attack, as he grew more religious.
The boys' father, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, said he was present when the FBI interviewed Tamerlan in Cambridge. He said they visited for what they called "prevention" activities. "They said: We know what sites you are on, we know where you are calling, we know everything about you. Everything," Mr. Tsarnaev said.
Another relative—Maret Tsarnaev, the paternal aunt of the brothers—defended the sons. "Nothing points out that my nephews did [the bombings]…I demand evidence," she said.

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This photo released Friday by the FBI shows a suspect that officials identified as Mr. Tsarnaev.

The Tsarnaev family, which included two boys and two girls, had come to America after facing discrimination as ethnic Chechens living in Kyrgyzstan during wars in their ethnic homeland. A separatist rebellion there, with elements of radical Islam, had been crushed by the Kremlin under presidents Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin.
Before arriving in the U.S., the family lived in a number of places. Anzor, the father, grew up as an ethnic Chechen in Kyrgyzstan, and said he briefly returned to Chechnya with the family in the early 1990s before moving back to the Central Asian republic. He then left Kyrgyzstan again, facing discrimination. The family lived for a few years in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, where Ms. Tsarnaev's family is from, before moving to the U.S.
U.S. law-enforcement officials said the two brothers came to the U.S. at different times. Dzhokhar arrived with his parents in 2002, just before he turned 10. Tamerlan arrived on his own around 2004. The family was granted legal permanent residence in the U.S. in March 2007, a law-enforcement official said.
An aunt, who already lived in the U.S., helped them get established. Soon they moved into a house in a poorer neighborhood near the border of Boston's Cambridge and Somerville suburbs. There they faced headwinds that many immigrant families encounter.

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Younger brother, Dzhokhar, in an undated photo after graduating from Cambridge Rindge & Latin High School.

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One problem was money. The father was unable to find steady work as a mechanic. He struggled to make ends meet by fixing cars on the street for $10 an hour, a practice that prompted neighbors to complain, according to one of the neighbors.
Tamerlan excelled in school but dropped out of Bunker Hill Community College because of money, according to the family's landlord, Joanna Herlihy. In an interview published in a Russian newspaper Friday, the father also recounted his younger son's problems with money, which he said he tried to solve by working as a lifeguard between studies.
Ms. Herlihy, who speaks Russian and helped tutor the children, said Tamerlan's boxing dreams eventually crumbled. "His back was in really bad shape and he couldn't get into the Olympics, and that was the last thing he really worked hard at," Ms. Herlihy said.
Dzhokhar excelled as a student at Cambridge Rindge & Latin School. "I know this kid to be compassionate. I know this kid to be forthcoming," said Larry Aaronson, a retired history teacher at the high school. "Every conversation I had with him—he was generous, compassionate and thoughtful."
A former classmate there said, "His brother and family weren't really Westernized, but Dzhokhar was really integrated into our school community. He was a normal American kid."
Attorney Andrea Kramer said Friday her sons played on the varsity soccer team while Dzhokhar played on the junior-varsity squad. Dzhokhar "wasn't 'them.' He was 'us,'" Ms. Kramer said. "He was Cambridge" and part of a community whose "strength and beauty" is its diversity.
The younger Mr. Tsarnaev was seen on campus at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, where he was studying nursing, in the days after the marathon attack, possibly on Wednesday, according to one student who lived in his dorm. He said his roommate shouted "Yo, Dzhokhar" to him in greeting.
Authorities are now trying to determine whether or not the young men had contact with terrorist figures. Last year Tamerlan traveled to Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, the Russian republic next to Chechnya where his father currently lives and where he has other relatives as well. Dagestan is home to a simmering Islamist insurgency.
Tamerlan came up with money for the trip and unexpectedly left for the Russian region. A law-enforcement official confirmed that Tamerlan flew out of New York on Jan. 12, 2012, for Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport and returned July 17. To travel to Dagestan from the U.S., most passengers go through Moscow.
The brothers' father, Anzor, said Tamerlan was with him while in Dagestan. "He wasn't occupied with anything. He was just visiting relatives," Mr. Tsarnaev said. He said there is no way his son interacted with Islamic fundamentalists while on the trip. "There aren't even any of those here anymore," he said.

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Evan Perez and former FBI special agent in charge Andrew Arena, discuss the significance of the Boston Marathon suspects being from Chechnya, Russia. Photo: AP.

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Before his departure, Tamerlan was showing signs of stricter religious beliefs, a family friend said. "He started to pray," his father said. About 3½ years ago he had married an American woman who mothered his child and converted to Islam. She was supporting him in recent months as a home health aide, the friend said.
His father said Tamerlan had a domestic incident in his past with his first girlfriend, and had struck her.
Richard Medeiros, who lives in the house behind the suspects, says that six months or so ago, Tamerlan, after being clean-shaven, grew a beard. "He looked like one of those Amish people," said Mr. Medeiros, who is 40 and lives in an apartment building that was evacuated by police and remained cordoned off Friday afternoon. "It made him look really old."
He said he must have shaved it only recently. "That's why I did not recognize him in the photos," he said.
He said his wife wore a black head-covering "down to her eyebrows" and was the friendliest of the group. "She was always asking, 'Hey, how ya doing? Is your leg getting better?'" said Mr. Medeiros, who is on crutches.
Tamerlan also influenced his younger brother. In an interview Friday with a Russian newspaper, his father, Anzor, said Dzhokhar "wouldn't have gotten involved in this against the will of his brother, Tamerlan, and his older brother never would have allowed such things." He denied that his sons were guilty.
In another interview, with a Russian tabloid-news website, he expressed concern about the fate of his sons. "We wanted some peace and calm in life," he said. "And you see what they've found. They were running away from one thing and they met another."
—Lisa Fleisher in West New York, N.J., Sara Germano in New York and David George-Cosh in Toronto contributed to this article