Opinion In BMC polls, where are the solutions Mumbai urgently needs?

The aam Mumbaikar needs only the lightest prod to talk about the several problems that plague the city by the sea: Potholed, traffic-choked roads and broken, overcrowded footpaths; towering mounds of waste that befoul its air and untreated sewage that chokes its water bodies; a public bus system perennially in the red and corrupt housing schemes. Few of these issues, however, seem to have occupied the spotlight in the run-up to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) election. Sadly, a narrow and divisive identity politics and political-electoral short-termism climbed centre stage in the campaign for India’s financial capital and one of its most cosmopolitan cities.

Taking place after a delay of almost four years, these local body polls in Maharashtra were marked by a more frantic than usual making and breaking of unlikely alliances. Amid the scramble, an old linguistic faultline was excavated in the BMC elections by the MNS and Shiv Sena (UBT). Dredged up in response to an ill-conceived attempt by the Maharashtra government to bring the three-language policy to the state’s schools last year, the “Marathi manoos” plank saw the Thackeray cousins reunite. The BJP has sought to outdo their nativist pitch, with the added twist of Hindutva politics, as seen in Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’s assertion that Mumbai’s next mayor will be a “Hindu Marathi” from the Mahayuti. This election was also the first local body poll, perhaps, to witness a large-scale contest of cash transfers and subsidies. Manifestos teemed with promises such as property tax waivers, free electricity and financial aid for domestic workers and women from the Koli community. The problems of Mumbai’s structural decay, in need of long-term and patient solutions, were left untouched.

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The municipal body that Mumbai elects today will form the crucial point of contact for citizens, with a direct impact on their quality of life in a time of fast-paced change. A long to-do list awaits the incoming cohort of 227 corporators. They need to fix public transport, formulate the long-promised policy on street vendors, create a parking plan for a city with an exploding vehicle density and manage the myriad problems of water quality, sewage treatment and waste management. The city of dreams is in urgent need of fixing. It will take accountability at the third tier of governance, a raft of imaginative solutions and a politics that is future-facing.