How to turn the light off and keep it on

Nice places attract people. They just do. But not all people in these nice places may take to the people who find 'their' place attractive enough to come visiting, or to settle down in. That's not just true of Smiths in Croydon and Patels in Richmond, scrunching up their noses at the thought of more Patels from Madhapar moving to London. Wannabe asset-strippers like Don Trump are also attracted by resourceful places like Greenland and Canada to want to Venezualise them as their own.

Being against outsiders of the 'wrong type' and in support of the 'right type' coming into your neighbourhood may not sound very liberal or textbook 'atithidevo bhava'. But then, which SoBo resident would like all-nighter jaagran-enthusiastic neighbours? Which inhabitants of Oud-Zuid (Old South), one of Amsterdam's poshest districts, would take to burqawalis pram-pushing in the local park? Both Venetians in Venice and Jarawas in the Andamans are understandably xenophobic about tourists descending on them like loud ebola.

In 2001, I was on a secondment with The Times, London, for 3 months. On the morning of September 11, I was attending an editorial meeting where the big news of the day being discussed was the growing influx of immigrants from places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Kurdish Turkiye, and Iran into Britain via the refugee camp at Sangatte in the northern coast of France.


Over that year, the number of refugees had swelled significantly to more than 1,000 - Sangatte was designed to temporarily house 200-500 people. Things reached a flashpoint when hundreds tried to break into the Eurotunnel to illegally move into the 'nice' final destination: Britain. My input was articulating the need to solve the puzzle: How do you turn off the light of a lighthouse for people you don't want to come to your coast, while ensuring that the people who you do want to come, come in and don't get dashed against the rocks?

It's another matter that by London lunchtime, Sangatte was displaced by a bigger news development I was watching real-time taking place across the pond in New York. But 25 years later, the 'lighthouse problem' not just remains, but has grown into both mainstream geopolitical and dinner conversation.

A 'nice' place, for people trying to either move there or acquire it as property is, of course, relative. For the dollar millionaire 'stuck' in his luxury condo in waterlogged, AQI-ravished Jor Bagh, moving to California's Pacific Palisades has the same fundamental reasoning behind it as a Rohingya refugee's from Myanmar or a Bangladeshi's to move to India: a better life.

Which is why it's my firm belief that some places have started deliberately making themselves unattractive, or even, in Trump's highly effective description, 'shitholes'. That has to be the only explanation why, despite engines of the Indian economy purring like a tom cat on E20, we are fed visuals of waterlogged Gurgaon, gridlocked Bangalore, lunar stretches in Mumbai... Even NYC has taken to this strategy, of late, showcasing waterlogged streets after a heavy downpour.

It's also why cities like Kolkata have, for decades, been happy to bask in its reputation as a crumbling boondock village pretending to be a city. (The flip reasoning may have been why Thomas and William Daniell created those iconic paintings and sketches of bucolic late 18th c. Bengal: to draw in the British seeker of a better life to an Orientalist, tropical Silicon Valley-Ko Samui.)

India and 'nice' parts of India have also taken to the cunning strategy of coming across as an increasingly visibly hard place to live in. That way, unwanted folks toying with the idea of moving here will junk such plans. Current residents would also be spared the influx of unwelcome outsiders. At the same time, shiny things like GDP, PR, and ultra-real estate prices will hopefully get the 'right sort' to come to a place near you, adding (market and prestige) value to your neighbourhood.

Who said you can't turn the light off to keep 'those ones' out, while keeping the light on for those you'd be delighted to have Sunday brunches at the club with?