Who really rules Mumbai? Migrants dominate the city, but not its civic power

The early decades: when non-Marathis dominated the civic landscape

In the decades before and after Independence, the political life of the Bombay Municipal Corporation reflected the city’s cosmopolitan character. At the turn of the 1960s, when the first corporation elections were held in 1968 under the overhauled framework introduced by Maharashtra Act No. XXXIII of 1966—it redrew ward boundaries and reconstituted the strength of the House to lay the grounds for the modernised electoral map that still stands—Gujaratis, Parsis, Marwaris, Muslims, Christians and South Indians were deeply embedded in municipal politics. While these non-Marathis constituted 58 per cent of Mumbai’s population in the 60s, they made up nearly 45 per cent of the city’s corporators in the mid-70s.

Across South Bombay, Gujarati and Parsi corporators controlled key wards in Fort, Kalbadevi, Girgaon and Walkeshwar. Their influence arose from trade guilds, philanthropic trusts, and business networks, and can be gauged from the fact that post-Independence till 1968, when the first BMC elections in their present form were held, 15 of the 21 mayors were non-Marathis.

The Shiv Sena era: when Marathi identity became a civic force

In the late sixties, the emergence of the Shiv Sena, which wanted to assert Marathi pride in a city perceived to be slipping away from its sons of the soil, marked the beginning of the transformation of Bombay’s urban politics. Its networks of shakhas across working-class areas introduced a level of hyper-local political organisation that the Congress, with its elite Gujarati-Parsi leadership, had never built.

By the 1980s, the Sena’s Marathi mobilisation meant that it had created a loyal Marathi vote-bank in Bombay, and more importantly, a strong rung of local Marathi leaders who were ready to fill in the shoes of entrenched non-Marathi politicians. The rise of the Shiv Sena resulted in a dip in non-Marathi corporators. This happened despite the growth in Bombay’s non-Marathi population as migration to the city increased.

The rising dominance of the Shiv Sena, along with the increase of the nativist agenda with the formation of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), resulted in the number of non-Marathi corporators hitting its lowest ebb of just 28 per cent by 2012.

Migration shifts: from industrial-era migration to a Hindi-belt influx

Mumbai, which began as a port city, found sustenance with the proliferation of textile units in the 1900s. The city’s growth was fuelled by migrants, who in 1921 made up nearly 84 per cent of the city’s population. Most of the migrants hailed from the erstwhile Bombay Presidency and came from areas like Konkan, western Maharashtra, parts of Gujarat and adjoining states like Goa. These migrants helped Mumbai become a commercial and industrial centre of note.

However, in the last 40 years, the gradual de-industrialisation of Mumbai and the shutting down of its textile mills led to a shift in migration. The transformation from an industrial hub to a service industry hub changed the migration pattern from largely intra-state to inter-state, attracting cheap labour from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

Ram B Bhagat from the Department of Migration and Urban Studies at the International Institute of Population Sciences pointed out in his paper titled ‘Population Change and Migration in Mumbai Metropolitan Region: Implications for Politics and Governance’ that the share of migrants from Maharashtra to Mumbai declined from 41.6 per cent in 1961 to 37.4 per cent in 2001. At the same time, the number of migrants from Uttar Pradesh increased from 12 per cent in 1961 to 24 per cent in 2001, while the increase from Bihar was even more steep, from 0.2 per cent to 3.5 per cent.

From 1971 to 2011, when the last Census was held, Mumbai’s population grew from 0.60 crore to 1.24 crore, an increase of 106 per cent.

Marathi speakers are the largest ethnolinguistic group in the city, and their number has grown at a rather staid rate of 76 per cent from 25.07 lakh to 44.04 lakh. In contrast, Hindi speakers, the second largest group today, have grown at a stupendous rate of over 502 per cent, from 5.96 lakh to 35.98 lakh. Gujarati, once widely spoken in Mumbai, has seen a 35 per cent increase in its speakers, from 10.53 lakh to 14.28 lakh. Urdu speakers have also grown by 125 per cent, from 6.47 lakh to 14.59 lakh.

Post-2014: BJP’s rise and the political assertion of migrant communities

The 2017 BMC elections were one of Mumbai’s most fiercely contested civic polls, defined by an acrimonious breakup between long-time allies, the Shiv Sena and the BJP. For the first time in decades, they fought separately. The Shiv Sena emerged as the single largest party with 84 seats, just narrowly ahead of the BJP, which made major gains to reach 82 seats, its best-ever performance in the city.

This was marked by one of the strongest performances by non-Marathi candidates, with 76 winning—the highest number ever in the BMC. It also marked a substantial increase in their proportional representation, with non-Marathi corporators making 33 per cent of the total elected corporators, compared to 28 per cent in 2012.

This massive uptick was largely due to the BJP’s sharp consolidation among non-Marathi and migrant voters, whose numbers have steadily increased, while the Sena held on to its traditional Marathi base, which has not grown at the same rate in Mumbai.

The BJP’s dominance at the Centre has meant that it is more comfortable positioning itself as pro-migrant, especially in Mumbai, even as the Shiv Sena’s traditional anti-migrant rhetoric has weakened. The BJP has also not held back in promoting non-Marathi leaders in Mumbai, unlike in the past. The BJP’s rise has given Mumbai’s non-Marathi migrant communities the political confidence and organisational backing to assert their identity, demand representation, and emerge as an influential electoral bloc in the city.

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