An online site makes the city's politicians accountable by revealing their promises
People stand in line to cast their vote
Every politician is meant to be as good as his word. But while they sometimes promise us the moon, we often end up with a handful of mud. What, then, is the solution in such a scenario? Accountability is the simple answer. As citizens, it's our duty to reverse the "Big Brother is watching you" theory and apply it to our elected representatives. Did they live up to their election manifestos? Have they followed through on a certain task they said they'd undertake? Or have they largely been twiddling their thumbs? These are the questions we must ask of our leaders, and that's what MumbaiVotes has set out to do.
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It's an organisation that runs the website mumbaivotes.com where all the promises of the city's political candidates are laid bare. Avowedly autonomous and unbiased in nature, the site includes features like five-minute videos where candidates are asked three questions: What's your track record in public life? What's your agenda for the people? And what's the biggest mistake you have made in your political career? There is also a section where experts assess the manifesto of each party, and another where they publish a report card of each MLA's performance. A database of online and newspaper articles acts as a further watchdog. The whole idea, in fact, is to ensure that electoral promises are in the public domain so that the leaders don't rest easy till they deliver on the same.
Vivek Gilani
Vivek Gilani, the organisation's founder, tells us, "People have this sense of, 'Oh, we should just vote for the leader of this or that party.' But that leader never even shows up to the office of his constituency. There is thus a big disconnect between the local reality and the grand narrative we weave in our minds that we'll change the government with our vote, when all you can really do is change the elected representative in your local constituency. So, the idea was to try and dispel some of the ignorance and general sense of blindness that I saw in the way we vote [as a citizenry]."
Avinay Umeshsanyogita, one of the core team members, adds that while certain politicians would earlier evade their relentless questioning via emails and phone calls, local leaders now call up the organisation themselves if there is, say, a delay in a video of theirs being posted on the site. That, of course, is encouraging news, since politics is meant to be a two-way street, and there's nothing like it if the candidates themselves take the onus of making their promises more accountable. Now, if only that mindset applied across the board.
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