While chatting with a prominent young politician from Mumbai last week, what I had always suspected got confirmed. When our governments think development, they mainly think hardware of a city or state, not software. A policy maker's top-down view of a city like Mumbai, for instance, is of buildings, flyovers, roads, airports, shopping centres, drainage. That is the city for them, mainly. The soul remains invisible from the top. The young politician, himself a lover of the arts, admitted as much. He said what was happening to live music would feature very low down on the government's list of priorities, to be looked into only once important matters like airport or slums have been dealt with.

It is this very presumption that can become the beginning of the end of a great city like Mumbai. Cities with a soul rise, cities without it fall. Mumbai is still India's biggest place for business not because it has the best infrastructure -- Delhi's roads are significantly better, and Chennai and Kolkata are great metros too.


Illustration/Satish Acharya

Mumbai is what it is because it has a spirit more inclusive, vibrant, tolerant and imaginative than the others. There is still the perception that one can speak freely here, live with a live-in partner without being investigated and harassed by neighbours, keep one's religion, write in revolt, party at any hour. Much of it may not be true any longer, but Bombay's strong legacy of free-spiritedness helps gloss over the many new flaws of Mumbai.

Among other things, one could go to a bar or restaurant and spend time with oneself, one's lover or family, happily drowned in a great live jazz or film music performance. Mumbai's live music scene of the '50s and '60s is well known. Artistes like jazz guitarist and composer Amancio D'Silva achieved international fame starting out from the staid mill lands of Parel.

But that city has changed. A Government Resolution passed in August makes establishments serving alcohol and providing live music pay a particularly killing entertainment tax. Five-star hotels pay Rs 2 lakh per month, stand-alone pubs Rs 1 lakh a month, and orchestra bars and permit rooms pay Rs 50,000 a month.

A number of five-stars have promptly sacked musicians, including those who performed for years. Many pubs have stopped inviting bands. Not many joints can afford cover rates like a Blue Frog, which in turn puts live music out of bounds for Mumbai's middle class.

Moreover, the metropolis has earned the pathetic distinction of being most unfriendly towards big-ticket concerts. While cities like Bangalore have moved towards single-window permits for such events, you need at least 23 tedious, mostly irrelevant permissions to make a Bono or Zubin Mehta play in the open Mumbai air.

Such thinking by the government not only puts hundreds of people's livelihood in danger and kills artistic talent, it has a profound effect on millions of others. Whole generations grow up without knowing the beauty of a live music performance. A little more of the city's humaneness quietly becomes steel. A smiling, welcoming city wilts.

No one wants to do business or live in a cold graveyard run by efficient machines. The government must remember that. Foresight is easy to avoid, but hindsight is not an easy thing to run from.

Abhijit Majumder is Executive Editor, Mid Day. Reach him at abhijit@mid-day.com