A sobering view!
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Weariness with Elections
Tavleen Singh
On my travels in our vast and wondrous land, I notice a weariness with elections that our politicians should no longer ignore. This weariness manifests itself in the mud huts of the very poor and the drawing rooms of the very rich in a single sentence - what difference does it make who wins. It manifests itself also in the contrast between the hype over last week's Assembly elections on our television channels and newspapers and the general ennui I detect on the ground in Maharashtra. I write this piece from a Maharashtrian village on polling day and it surprises me that in the small, spice-scented bazaar that sells everything from plastic buckets and glass bangles to TV sets and automobile tires, nobody seems to notice the election. Hoardings in garish colours advertise the virtues of one obscure candidate over another. I recognize neither name but spot Sonia Gandhi's face benignly dominating one and Bal Thackeray, in his usual shades and saffron, glowering over the other.
When I stop to ask people what the issues are this time they look momentarily puzzled before answering that they are the same as they were in the last election. "And they (politicians) know what the issues are. They do nothing about them. We don't see them till they come back asking for our votes again'.
The only election excitement in town is on the front pages of newspapers. The Navbharat Times headline is splashed across eight columns, as if some major event had occurred, and says "288 seats, 2,678 candidates and today is decision time." I do not understand Marathi and so ask someone to translate the headlines of the local newspapers for me. The Dainik Krushal shrieks its allegiance in a headline that says, "Come let us perform the shraddha of the Congress Party today." The Shiv Sena's Saamna shrieks its in a headline urging voters to give the Congress-NCP government a "drubbing" with Loksatta showing no allegiance but bursting with excitement in it being "our day today."
I ask people if they will be voting and they say yes, of course, but add that sentence I have heard too often "but what difference will it make." I mentioned in last week's column that I have done a lot of travelling in Maharashtra in the past couple of months and, incredible though this may sound, in all these travels I met only one voter who initiated a discussion about the election. He came from the Mumbai suburb of Bandra and said that in his view the Bharatiya Janata Party would have won the seat this time if they had put up a local candidate instead of "a woman nobody knows."
Bandra is traditionally a Congress seat but its candidate Baba Siddique has lost popularity in recent years on account of a reputation for being a wheeler-dealer. "He buys old property cheaply" said the voter from Bandra "and sells them to builders for a fortune. He exploits people and would have been thrown out this time but people didn't know who to vote for instead because the BJP candidate is someone who we have never heard of."
What, said I, had he not heard of Shaina, NC the famous fashion designer? When he heard that the BJP candidate was a fashion designer he got quite irritable. "And, what is a fashion designer doing in politics? What does she know about the issues in Bandra? I have heard that she makes speeches about nationalism and patriotism but will nationalism solve Bandra's housing problems?"
Mumbai is not a political city even at election time so in the salons of Malabar Hill the only concession to the Assembly election have been "theme parties" in which revellers have come dressed in the colours of the party they support. Appropriate if unintended disdain for a political process that has done nothing to solve the grim and growing problems of a city that in the next decade will have more problems than any in the world. Maximum City is the title of a well received new book.
Tavleen Singh
On my travels in our vast and wondrous land, I notice a weariness with elections that our politicians should no longer ignore. This weariness manifests itself in the mud huts of the very poor and the drawing rooms of the very rich in a single sentence - what difference does it make who wins. It manifests itself also in the contrast between the hype over last week's Assembly elections on our television channels and newspapers and the general ennui I detect on the ground in Maharashtra. I write this piece from a Maharashtrian village on polling day and it surprises me that in the small, spice-scented bazaar that sells everything from plastic buckets and glass bangles to TV sets and automobile tires, nobody seems to notice the election. Hoardings in garish colours advertise the virtues of one obscure candidate over another. I recognize neither name but spot Sonia Gandhi's face benignly dominating one and Bal Thackeray, in his usual shades and saffron, glowering over the other.
When I stop to ask people what the issues are this time they look momentarily puzzled before answering that they are the same as they were in the last election. "And they (politicians) know what the issues are. They do nothing about them. We don't see them till they come back asking for our votes again'.
The only election excitement in town is on the front pages of newspapers. The Navbharat Times headline is splashed across eight columns, as if some major event had occurred, and says "288 seats, 2,678 candidates and today is decision time." I do not understand Marathi and so ask someone to translate the headlines of the local newspapers for me. The Dainik Krushal shrieks its allegiance in a headline that says, "Come let us perform the shraddha of the Congress Party today." The Shiv Sena's Saamna shrieks its in a headline urging voters to give the Congress-NCP government a "drubbing" with Loksatta showing no allegiance but bursting with excitement in it being "our day today."
I ask people if they will be voting and they say yes, of course, but add that sentence I have heard too often "but what difference will it make." I mentioned in last week's column that I have done a lot of travelling in Maharashtra in the past couple of months and, incredible though this may sound, in all these travels I met only one voter who initiated a discussion about the election. He came from the Mumbai suburb of Bandra and said that in his view the Bharatiya Janata Party would have won the seat this time if they had put up a local candidate instead of "a woman nobody knows."
Bandra is traditionally a Congress seat but its candidate Baba Siddique has lost popularity in recent years on account of a reputation for being a wheeler-dealer. "He buys old property cheaply" said the voter from Bandra "and sells them to builders for a fortune. He exploits people and would have been thrown out this time but people didn't know who to vote for instead because the BJP candidate is someone who we have never heard of."
What, said I, had he not heard of Shaina, NC the famous fashion designer? When he heard that the BJP candidate was a fashion designer he got quite irritable. "And, what is a fashion designer doing in politics? What does she know about the issues in Bandra? I have heard that she makes speeches about nationalism and patriotism but will nationalism solve Bandra's housing problems?"
Mumbai is not a political city even at election time so in the salons of Malabar Hill the only concession to the Assembly election have been "theme parties" in which revellers have come dressed in the colours of the party they support. Appropriate if unintended disdain for a political process that has done nothing to solve the grim and growing problems of a city that in the next decade will have more problems than any in the world. Maximum City is the title of a well received new book.
Half the city's population lives in slums without access to sanitation or clean drinking water. These people have been hearing about slum "redevelopment" from both the coalitions that seek to win this time and so far nothing has happened. It will not happen either, until Maharashtra gets a government that recognizes that the need is for serious urban planning and not ad hoc decisions made according to the whim of some politician.
Mumbai has no real estate that people in the middle and lower income groups can afford. When you consider that even famous movie stars live in small apartments in this city that is home to Bollywood you realize how serious the problem is. This might sound like an odd prism to view the problem through but when an actor earning crores of rupees a year can only afford what would be considered lower middle income accommodation in Shanghai or Singapore you begin to understand the gravity of Mumbai's housing crisis.
Yet, every election we have some political leader or other promising to turn Mumbai into India's equivalent of a glamorous foreign city. In earlier elections Sharad Pawar routinely promised that Mumbai would be Singapore and this time Atal Bihari Vajpayee promised that if his party formed the government Mumbai would become Shanghai. What a cruel thing to say when Mumbai is about as far from becoming Shanghai as Vajpayee is from becoming Sonia Gandhi.
Having been to Shanghai in 1997 when it was in the process of building a brand new Singapore across the river from the older part of the city may I say that our former prime minister is making yet another impossible promise.
When I was in Shanghai I jogged through old streets in the old city and saw people living in one-room tenements but nowhere did I see the squalor I see around every street corner in Mumbai. Last month I spent a day wandering about Mumbra with a TV camera and was horrified to see middle-class people living on the edge of a vast, stinking, black pool of rotting garbage and stagnant water. This pit from hell was the size of a children's park.
Others in the lower and middle income group in Mumbai live in residential quarters on the edge of sewers, in hovels that cling to embankments on the edge of the sea and in hovels made of waste material on pavements across the city. And, this is the city that is going to become Shanghai?
Nothing will change for Mumbai, Maharashtra or India as long as elections continue to be held haphazardly and so often that politics leaves no time for governance or development. It is time that we decided on elections to Parliament and all State assemblies being held simultaneously every five years. But, who is going to plan this when our Election Commissioner wastes his energy sending inspectors to five-star hotels to make sure they do not serve liquor on the day before polling. When he is not doing this he is busy making moral codes that have not prevented every fourth member of Parliament being a criminal. Is it any wonder that the average Indian tires of elections.
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