If water, sanitation, roads, potholes, etc matter to you, I don’t know a more important vote than for local body elections; no?
The facade and interiors of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation headquarters at Mahanagarpalika Marg in Fort, South Mumbai. Pics/MAyank Shekhar
If you aren’t a history buff, unlikely that you’ve heard of the UK-trained barrister, freedom fighter, Vithalbhai Patel, who passed away in Geneva, aged 60, in 1933.
The nation went into deep mourning then, with reports of “shops shuttering, thousands gathered at meetings all over India.”
My one memory of him is from the shoddily edited biopic, Ketan Mehta’s Sardar (1993), where you watch the eponymous Vallabhbhai Patel (later India’s first home minister) scoff at Mahatma Gandhi in a gymkhana scene, and then join him right after, when he’s introduced to the Mahatma by his brother.
Vithalbhai was Vallabhbhai’s brother, elder by a couple of years.
The second time I heard mention of Vithalbhai, recently, was inside the main hall of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) headquarters, where the city’s corporators deliberate on civic issues, seated in concentric circles. Much like the Indian parliament.
There’s a big portrait of Vithalbhai in there. He headed the BMC as Bombay’s mayor, 1923-25 — shortly after 1919 Montague-Chelmsford reforms, that gave Indians greater representation in municipal governance.
Vithalbhai subsequently became the first Indian speaker of the Central Legislative Assembly in New Delhi. Which, I guess, tells you much about how your stars would be on the rise, if you got elected Bombay’s mayor, after all.
The exquisite insides of the BMC HQ feel like hard-rock music set to Victorian gothic architecture. From the outside, you know it first from the majestic statue of Sir Pherozeshah Mehta that, for the year it got placed (1923), Vithalbhai would’ve unveiled it.
Also, a lawyer, Pherozeshah aka ‘Lion of Bombay’, is widely regarded as the father of BMC, having served as its first president, or what was then the title for mayor (in 1888).
I’m sure you know the mayor of New York City. The only time you might hear of the mayor in Mumbai is for a landmark, in Dadar, that cabbies call ‘Mayur bungalow’.
This sea-facing, grand mansion is being converted into a museum for Balasaheb Thackeray — an open space, open for public; a delight so rare to Mumbai that I can’t wait for it to fully open, already.
What of the actual mayor, who’ll get elected among the winning party of corporators at the BMC elections of January 15? That person, reportedly, gets a home within Byculla zoo!
What’ll be her powers, anyway? No more than any of the 227 corporators. Chairing meetings with whom is possibly her only real job.
Zohran Mamdani has greater influence on the Mumbai imagination than its actual mayor. What about the local corporator?
I first read about mine (M West ward #153), Anil Ramchandra Patankar — who’s been elected multiple times from the area— for his name on the walls, like an artist’s signature, outside my Chembur home, that he’d once got artistically painted.
I’d warmed up to him, already. Aesthetics is barely a pan-Mumbai trait. Nobody expects it, either. Anil has previously served as chairman of BEST; as in the city’s bus services.
Ever since, the ward has got reserved for “OBC-ladies”. There are more female (878) than male (822) candidates in the BMC elections.
Anil’s wife, Meenakshi, is contesting from the seat. He tells me, “This was the party’s decision, and she’s been with me [in public life] over two-and-half decades.”
He says he’d been campaigning for two weeks, straight, once they filed the papers, while having been in touch with key constituents, including management committees of buildings (“societies”), all along.
Anil feels, “In one of the elections, I won because the votes from the societies was more than my victory margin.”
Anil belongs to Shiv Sena (UBT). In between, he had left with Narayan Rane to join the Congress as corporator, and returned to Shiv Sena — getting reelected in the bypolls, regardless.
He seems a local doer, fully invested in slum issues; addressing ones obviously in greater/genuine need.
And when the politics is so close to the nose/ground, I suspect, ideologies hardly matter as much to the voting public, let alone politicians.
The national commentariat, hence, were rudely surprised, when BJP-AIMIM, even Congress-BJP, formed post-poll alliances (subsequently aborted, of course), in the Ambernath and Akot local body elections, earlier in January!
I’ve extensively covered general elections in the past, wherein the scale is way wider, and the candidates sweeter still. Powers erodes their brains, only once they grab it.
BMC makes national news, chiefly for its annual budget, around R75,000 crore; more than several small states. But the corporator, as per Anil, mainly receives Rs 2 crore a year as development funds.
For the most part, they petition and petition, through committees and sessions, to BMC officers, and commissioner — a bureaucrat who, in turn, reports to a bureaucrat, and eventually the chief minister.
Still, it’s refreshing to hear this politician’s demands and lifelong achievements, over half an hour, fixing “nalas, hawkers, (specific) footpaths, hydraulic engineers for water, batteries for solar-powered street-lights, MRI scan…”
His big promise is for a road to go around, rather than through a maidaan he reclaimed, from purportedly “reserved” land. These seem real/immediate, resolvable issues. Global/national concerns are above my municipal pay-grade, anyway.
Whether or not for Patankar, and for whatever it’s worth — I am certainly voting in the BMC elections.
Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture.
He tweets @mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
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