Offstumped – Commentary on Indian Politics

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Politics and Public Policy in India

February 15, 2012 • 8:34 pm 2

Mumbai goes to Polls – OpEd in Mid-Day on BMC Polls 2012

Originally published in The Mid-Day on 14th February 2012

From asking for action against street hawkers to restraining clean up Marshals from imposing fines, the Courts in Mumbai it would seem have been more seized about issues in this local election in recent days than the political parties. As Mumbai gears up to go to polls this week to elect its local government the debate has largely focused on conventional issues with no radical vision emerging from any of the three principal combines.

A particularly sore point in local governance in Mumbai has been the question of who ultimately has responsibility for the affairs of this mega city. Based on this columnist’s exchange with Mumbai insiders from within the political circles it would appear that the election will largely be about the candidates and less about the issues. Thus the absence of a radical agenda to remake local governance in Mumbai is not surprising.

This election will mostly end up being about incremental and linear change without radically altering the status quo. While the incumbent ruling combine would like to keep the focus on improvements, their principal challengers the Congress-NCP duo have been highlighting the dismal state of infrastructure, mainly Mumbai’s pothole riven roads.

Interestingly BMC being a debt free Municipal Corporation the debate has been less about how to raise revenues and more about budgets not spent. While the BJP did bring up the issue of eliminating the practice of collecting Octroi Tax, the proposal seems to have few takers both within its own alliance and the Opposition. The muted debate over Octroi opens a window to a larger debate over the share of the revenues from all the economic activity generated by a mega city like Mumbai.

While one sees stray comments from the BJP-SS combine and even the Congress partner NCP on Mumbai’s claim to a greater share of the revenues it generates, what is missing from this election is an informed debate on fundamental changes to the devolution of power between the Centre, state and local government with increasing financial autonomy to Local Government. An additional dimension to this mix in this election is the continued attempt by so called independent “citizen candidates”.

The DNA on February 6 had an interesting story on an umbrella organisation called Mumbai 227 pledging support to 60 such candidates. Not to be left behind in this attempt to striking a different path is the Lok Satta Party that has hit the campaign trail with a “unique public pledge”.

The fragmented political space notwithstanding the focus of the election will largely be on the principal political parties in general and more specifically on whether the RPI alliance makes any difference to the incumbent BJP-SS combine and on the degree to which Raj Thackeray’s MNS emerges as king maker.

Mumbai Insiders are projecting a close contest with the BJP-SS-RPI combine and the Congress-NCP combine finishing within a margin of few seats of each other between 85 and 100 each while the MNS picks up around 20 seats. A survey by Star Majha put the Congress-NCP ahead of the SS-BJP-RPI combine by about 10 seats with diminished role for the MNS.

Yet another local election may go past by Mumbai without a significant debate on the key issue of greater devolution of power and greater autonomy to local government. It is in fact surprising that the Mumbai election did not see any debate at all on the issue of a Directly Elected Mayoral system that is typical of mega cities or on the issue of making Law enforcement and First Responder agencies directly accountable to the communities they serve. That debate perhaps will have to wait for another day while Mumbai goes to polls with 2,233 candidates in fray.

Filed under: Mumbai BMC Polls 2012, OpEds on Mumbai BMC Polls 2012

January 5, 2012 • 7:23 pm 2

Mumbai BMC Polls 2012 – Combating Organized Voter Apathy

Originally published by the Mumbai MID-DAY here. Atanu Dey’s book can be found here. The UVI website for Mumbai BMC Polls 2012 can be found here.

There comes a phase in life where fun on New Year’s Eve is subjected to endless juvenile entertainment. This New Year’s Eve was not very different but for a pleasant surprise. Tucked away within the repertoire of juvenile movies the kids had lined up for the late evening was a movie called Chillar Party. While subtly touching on the sensitive subject of child labour the redeeming aspect of the movie was it ended on a feel good note keeping in spirit of the evening. What was however remarkable about the movie was the bold manner in which it made a statement on citizen engagement through a sequence that saw the kids in the movie march down to a Mumbai landmark in their unmentionables under the banner of a “Chhadi March”. The message was stark as the children sought to shame their parents and cynical politicians into engagement and action.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) goes to polls on February 16. Even before the poll schedule was announced stories have started to appear in the media over voter apathy. In a story titled “Youth fault BMC on bad roads, poor water supply” the Times of India offered a glimpse of how unimpressed young voters of Mumbai were by online campaigns of the Political parties. Much of the sentiment expressed in that story was over street violence and civic apathy in providing basic services. Along comes this other story in the MiD DAY titled ‘It is time to know how not to vote’ on an NGO that plans to tap into this negative sentiment and educate young voters on exercising their franchise while rejecting all candidates.

It is not without reason voter cynicism is running high especially among young voters and first time voters. Much of the youth outreach it appears has been focused not on a vision for how Mumbai must be governed but on peripheral issues like hunger strikes, blood donation camps and employment fairs.  Belated attempts by the BMC to fix roads over the past few months seem to have done little to counter the cynicism with doubts being expressed on their ability to survive the next rains.

The kind of cynical politics that has been on display in Mumbai over the encroachment on land for an Ambedkar Memorial shows how phony issues of identity have taken precedence over a meaningful agenda for Local Governance. It is a shame that politics in Mumbai over an Ambedkar memorial has come to be a repudiation of the very perils of hero worship that Ambedkar himself had warned of during his famous speech in the Constituent Assembly.

With both the Congress-NCP combine and the Shiv Sena, BJP, RPI-Athavale combine making a strong pitch for the Dalit vote it is anybody’s guess at this time if the BMC polls will see a meaningful agenda on local governance. It is a shame that the nation’s most populous city is falling short on being a role model for how Indian cities ought to be governed in the decades to come. One is yet to see in Mumbai or in the rest of Maharashtra the sort of progressive experiments in local governance that have been attempted by other states.

Tamil Nadu recently set a new trend by requiring direct elections to mayors to all local bodies across the state. Gujarat broke new ground last year by attempting to overcome voter apathy through innovations like Internet based voting. Even Bangalore, while being distracted by political instability in the state, was able to at least express its aspiration on how it must be governed through the ABIDE initiative.

Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh too got around to making a pitch for devolving more power to local government through the creation of a “Local bodies Financial List” in the Constitution. In the same speech Dr Singh spoke of empowering the bodies with exclusive taxes and unlocking land value to put in place a transparent and accountable mechanism for the monetisation of public land. It is ironic that less than a month later Dr Singh’s government unlocked land value alright but for an opaque and political monetisation of prime real estate in Mumbai with local polls in mind.

It will take bold moves on the part of the political parties in the fray in Mumbai to overcome the apathy and the deep cynicism of the young voter and the first time voter. The parties will have to go beyond the experiments like the one attempted recently by the MNS’ Raj Thackeray on conducting a test for aspirants to local polls. But the young voter too needs to realise that unless they create a demand for agenda local governance, the parties will fall back to good old identity politics.

Blogger and economist Atanu Dey in his book Transforming India had called for the creation of a vote bank for good governance by mobilising enlightened urban voters. Dey called this vote bank the UVI or “United Voters of India”.  It is good to see that Dey’s UVI is no longer an academic construct as voting bloc begins to assume shape in Mumbai through the website http://www.unitedvotersofindia.com.

This UVI in Mumbai is quite clear in its aspiration that it wants to create demand for good governance by organising the young and enlightened voter into a sizeable voting bloc with the bargaining power to force change. One hopes the young and first time voters of Mumbai tap into UVI and other such non-partisan initiatives to engage with the political process rather than resign themselves to a mere negative expression of resentment come February 16.

The climax in the movie Chillar Party was a riveting confrontation between the kids and a fictitious minister live on prime time television. In that confrontation one of the kids who is silent for the most part in the movie stands up to the minister to remind him why it is important to do the right thing even if it makes you unpopular.  There is a profound message there for the young and first time voter of Mumbai to rise above the cynicism within their peer groups to engage with the political process and make a difference.

Filed under: Mumbai BMC Polls 2012, Nitin Gadkari, OpEds on Mumbai BMC Polls 2012

December 8, 2011 • 8:00 am 3

MNS’ Raj Thackeray attempts a radical innovation – OpEd in Mid-Day Mumbai

Originally published in the Mid-Day Mumbai

Politics in India never ceases to surprise and Maharashtra is no exception. In a radical move, Raj Thackeray and his MNS have subjected all aspirants to upcoming local body polls to a written test. The test a 90-minute exercise was to have both objective and descriptive questions. Conducted across the state, the test was mandatory to both new aspirants and sitting MNS corporators. While the exam paper was not leaked, as is customary with many exams in India, one did get a glimpse of the kind of questions that were asked on the functioning of local bodies.

Much debate will likely ensue on the fidelity of the evaluation and on the meaningfulness of using the performance in this test as a benchmark for selecting candidates in the upcoming polls. Parallels will be drawn with other methods of candidate selection for a general election such as holding Primaries based on Ballots and conducting Caucuses. There is very little appreciation though on how democracy based on the party system has evolved in other mature democracies and the time horizon over which such an evolution happened.

As an example for nearly the first 50 years of Presidential Democracy in the United States, the Presidential candidate was chosen by the Legislators of the respective parties in Washington DC. That system changed to nomination by representatives within a National Convention sometime in the mid-1800s. It was not until the early 1900s that we see the first instance of the present-day Primary system. Even then adoption was spotty and it was not until the late 1960s that there was nationwide ubiquity in how candidates were selected based on grassroots democracy. Grassroots democracy for candidate continues to be work in progress even in the US as individual states jockey to move the calendar.

When we lament the dysfunctional state of the Indian democracy we forget that we comparing an evolution in the West that happened over nearly a 200-yr time period with what is essentially a young democracy in its toddler days. Technology has no doubt allowed India to leapfrog on several fronts. In some respects political innovations unique to India like a Federal Election Commission that efficiently executes a 100% electronic election can put even some of these more mature democracies to shame. However to expect a social change of the magnitude that occurs over two centuries to be achieved within a short 60-odd years is a reflection of our impatience for change more than anything else.

Many forget that the American Republic nearly 100 years after it came into existence had a near death experience in the form of the Civil War. Some may compare the Indian Emergency of the 1970s with that near death experience but it was not quite on the same scale. Our seemingly dysfunctional democracy has a long way to go, growing out of its Toddler years into Adolescence and eventually into Adulthood. A written examination for candidates may not reflect grassroots voter sentiments. The many flaws in its execution will likely end up doing more damage than good. Nevertheless it says something that for 90 minutes all budding and sitting politicians at the local level were humbled into quiet introspection and reflection on the task they have set themselves about.

In a country that has taken “test taking” to a level of professional sophistication to spawn a mini-economy around “test taking”, this MNS Test may not be a big deal. In the years to come every possible trick in the book that has been applied to guile the unsuspecting examiner, will likely get applied here. But nevertheless a beginning has been made to drive home the point that a basic democratic temperament on the nature and functioning of local government is a pre-requisite for those seeking to represent their wards. In this context it must be said that Rahul Gandhi’s Youth Congress experiments deserve credit too despite the process resulting in flawed electoral outcomes. While Rahul Gandhi may not have succeeded in leveling the playing field within his Youth Congress elections, a beginning has been made. As a first step the process of holding ballots has been institutionalized. If not in the first iteration, subsequent iterations will likely yield the desired outcomes.

Where the MNS’ test will go from here will depend on the kind of institutional leadership Raj Thackeray provides to it in the days to come. Politics in Maharashtra has for long been fragmented resulting in the re-election of NCP-Congress combine despite the monumental incompetence of its previous Chief Ministers. The BJP and the Shiv Sena are attempting a new kind of consolidation with their new found alliance partner Ramdas Athavale of the RPI. In this mix Raj Thackeray continues to be the wild card. He may have taken time out to study Narendra Modi’s Gujarat but it is far from clear if he has come of age to become Maharashtra’s Narendra Modi.

Raj Thackeray’s creative side came through with this radical experiment to set entry criteria for aspiring candidates. It will be interesting to observe his evolution along other leadership dimensions, as he looks set to challenge both status quo and conventional political wisdom in Maharashtra.

Filed under: Local Governance, Mumbai BMC Polls 2012, Offstumped, OpEds on Mumbai BMC Polls 2012

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Opinions expressed on this site using the alias Offstumped are the blogger's personal opinions and do not in any way reflect the views of the blogger's Employers.