Maximum Mumbai’s civic polls are turning traditional politics on its head

If you enter the massive slum colony of Dharavi in India’s financial capital via one of the myriad lanes around it, banners in Tamil with Pongal greetings and photos of the Jallikattu bull are hard to miss. Equally hard to miss is Aryan Khan’s lingerie shop, bang opposite the non-descript mosque, Masjid-e-Abrar. Make no mistake about the cultural mores of the locality that is home to some 10 lakh people — for as you exit the lane and hit the main road, you will find shops selling full length black abayas (burqas). Jewellery shops, with signage in English, Devnagari and Tamil compete with onion-bhajiya outlets for space. Freshly steamed idlis are sold from a handcart. Completing the melange, at the Shiva Sena shakha office just behind the idli cart, sits Muthu Thevar, the Sena’s upa -vibhag pramukh (or deputy-divisional head ), a Tamil by lineage and a Mumbaikar by birth.
Thevar, 47, has been a Sena worker since 1984, after he heard Bal Thackeray speak at a rally in Shivaji Park. He has been in some post or other of the party since 1986. Today, he is easily the face of the Sena under Uddhav Thackeray that, while reaching out beyond its core Marathi-appeal to build a wider footprint, is trying to protect its turf. The key data point here is that the proportion of Marathi population in Mumbai has progressively dropped to 22-25% from around 52% in 1960. Mumbai politics has perforce moved beyond Marathi pride. The Sena breakaway group, Maharashtra Navanirman Sena of Uddhav’s cousin Raj Thackeray, has lost its footing in the city while focusing on the Marathi votes. Immediately at stake is the control of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) and its Rs 37,000 crore annual budget. Both the Sena alliance partner BJP and the Congress are trying to widen their own appeal.

Says Thevar: “In Dharavi we have Tamils, Muslims, Maharashtrians, north Indians, south Indians all working for the Shiv Sena. It’s like Hindustan, where everyone’s views are respected.” Also, Dharavi, which has 1.5 lakh Tamil inhabitants, is not an isolated case. Shiv Sena is trying to put on a more genteel, cosmopolitan air across Mumbai.

The Shiv Sena shakha in Ghatkopar West is in a suburb dominated by Gujaratis, a community that BJP’s chief spokesperson for Maharashtra Madhav Bhandari says is upset with the Shiv Sena. “They are upset because of the way the Sena leadership has often attacked the predominantly-Gujarati national leadership of the BJP — PM Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah,” Bhandari says. Yet, for the Shiv Sena, Gujaratis (making up 18-20% of the city) are a key target voter group this year. Bharat Shah, a two-year old recruit to the Sena, is one such example of this new outlook. “The Gujarati community feels safe and empowered with the Shiv Sena in Mumbai,” says the businessmanturned-politician. Rajendra Raut, a senior party functionary and head of the Ghatkopar and Mankhurd operations for the Shiv Sena, adds, “Mumbai is changing and we are keeping pace with this transformation.”

Anil Singh, a corporator for the Sena at MCGM,is a north Indian; and the Sena’s shakha pramukh (head) in Kamathipura, is a Muslim man popularly known as Shaqil Bhai.

The Congress, for its part, has promptly targeted the Konkani-voter base of the Sena within Mumbai and has asked its MLA from Kankavli, a town in Sindhudurg district in the Konkan, to help with it. The president of the Mumbai Regional Congress Committee, Sanjay Nirupam, himself is a north Indian face.

In an interview with ET Magazine Nirupam points out that in the last five years 37 Marathi-medium schools have closed in Mumbai and 40,000 students have left these schools because of lack of quality education. “If the BMC is spending Rs 51,000 a year per student, where is that money going?” Nirupam, however, is not keen to push the envelope of community outreach much further. “This cannot be just about litti-chokha (the popular Bihari snack after which festivals are organised in Mumbai to woo the community),” he says. “We have to focus on infrastructure and performance of the Shiv Sena-BJP led MCGM.”

He rattles of numbers easily. “They have spent Rs 7 crore per km for repairing roads while the global average for building a kilometer of a new road is Rs 5 crore. While the international norm is to provide Rs 150 litres of water per day, here they provide only 45 litres. Most of the solid waste is still dumped in the sea, there is no plan to use it as fuel to generate electricity either. This election is not about communities. It is about scams — road scam, de-silting scam, tablet scam and now a penguin scam,” Nirupam says, referring in the end to the death of a penguin imported for exhibition at the Byculla Zoo.

Neelam Gorhe, Shiv Sena’s spokesperson and member of the state upper house, is quick to point out that Nirupam remains the North Indian face of the Congress. “In the Sena, we are all sainiks, whichever community we may come from, unlike Congress or BJP where they have the concept of cells. Leaders in Congress remain leaders of this or that community. In Sena, they become leaders of all sections.”

The Shiv Sena’s efforts to metamorphose into a more cosmopolitan entity are surely a work-in progress. That is probably why it has continued to support the BJP governments in the Centre and the state, even while occasionally hitting out at the BJP leadership. Ongoing negotiations on an alliance with the BJP are a test of how much progress the Sena has made and if it is ready to stand on its own feet.