It's amusing, and sad, how elected representatives will go to any extent to get their names on banners, posters, even dustbins
BJP leaders Poonam Mahajan and Ashish Shelar seem quite happy to lend their names and faces to this public toilet at Bandra Bandstand. File pic
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Here's an interesting piece of news that slipped under our radars a few weeks ago, presumably because we were distracted by babies dying in government hospitals and spiritual leaders being convicted for rape. A few weeks ago, a BMC corporator was accused by a councillor of stocking up on dustbins for a year. The bins had reportedly been given by the BMC for distribution among its wards, and the corporator was accused of hoarding them. It even prompted a number of police complaints, after the corporator and councillor attacked each other in public.
I put aside the question of why the police always seemed more inclined to file complaints over inane issues than they ever did when it came to more serious crimes, because I was struck by the reason for this alleged act of hoarding.
According to an unnamed senior BMC official, delimitation had forced many candidates to contest from other wards. Some of them, naturally, lost the elections in these new zones. The corporators who replaced them didn't want to distribute the dustbins because they had stickers featuring photographs of previous corporators. They didn't want to return them to their respective ward offices either, because they assumed they could use them for their own publicity at some point.
Let's put aside the shoddy, half-hearted joke that passes for garbage collection in our city. Let's put aside the fact that designated spots for garbage collection are outnumbered by unofficial corners that turn into dustbins overnight. Let's also put aside the fact that no sane person would want their photographs plastered on the sides of these bins. What this hoarding proves — as if we didn't already know - is just how publicity-hungry our elected representatives are. To deprive an area of dustbins in order to further their political ambitions is an act that — pun unintended — stinks.
It's the same desperate need to be noticed that drives these men and women to stamp their names and mug shots on every permissible surface. Courts have prevented them from defacing our city, but that hasn't stopped them from breaking the law during every festival, glaring awkwardly at passers-by who are supposed to be thankful for their presence and encouraged to elect them the next time around. It's what prevents bridges and roads from being thrown open on time, as they scramble to ensure the presence of their names on ugly commemorative plaques alongside.
It's what compels them to name our street corners after long-dead relatives, all unknowns whose contributions to our city are forever shrouded in history, yet whose names crop up at traffic signals anyway, to be ignored by the rest of us almost as soon as they appear.
I often wonder what compels these people to share their photographs with the rest of us. Do they expect us to be grateful to them for doing the jobs they have been entrusted with doing by virtue of standing for public office? Do they expect us to felicitate them for building things that have, in effect, come into being with our own taxes? What exactly do they do for our city other than raise issues that don't matter, rename streets or evade people who ask them for answers to tough questions?
If you're wondering what will happen to those dustbins, or the corporator accused of hoarding them, your guess is as good as mine. Chances are those police complaints will magically fade away, the dustbins may or may not find their way to the public they were intended for, and the corporator will live to fight another election, where he or she will have more opportunities to squander taxpayer money on schemes bearing his or her name.
Someone on Twitter had an interesting thing to say about renaming things in India. The person suggested we name our roads and bridges after the people who build them, in the hope that this compels them to give us something that lasts for a change. Our corporators and politicians will never agree, but it's an amusing thought — the idea that we name things after people who actually work, rather than those who simply rush to claim credit because they happen to hold a position for a short period of time, going back to where they came from after their terms end.
Ours must be the only country where public toilets proudly carry the names and photographs of political party representatives. And it seems funny, except for the fact that the joke is on us.
When he isn't ranting about all things Mumbai, Lindsay Pereira can be almost sweet. He tweets @lindsaypereira. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
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