Just going BTS of the BMC for a bit!

If you arenrsquot a history buff unlikely that yoursquove heard of the UKtrained barrister freedom fighter Vithalbhai Patel who passed away in Geneva aged 60 in 1933The nation went into deep mourning then with reports of ldquoshops shuttering thousands gathered at meetings all over IndiardquoMy one memory of him is from the shoddily edited biopic Ketan Mehtarsquos Sardar 1993 where you watch the eponymous Vallabhbhai Patel later Indiarsquos first home minister scoff at Mahatma Gandhi in a gymkhana scene and then join him right after when hersquos introduced to the Mahatma by his brotherVithalbhai was Vallabhbhairsquos brother elder by a couple of yearsThe second time I heard mention of Vithalbhai recently was inside the main hall of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation BMC headquarters where the cityrsquos corporators deliberate on civic issues seated in concentric circles Much like the Indian parliamentTherersquos a big portrait of Vithalbhai in there He headed the BMC as Bombayrsquos mayor 192325 mdash shortly after 1919 MontagueChelmsford reforms that gave Indians greater representation in municipal governanceVithalbhai subsequently became the first Indian speaker of the Central Legislative Assembly in New Delhi Which I guess tells you much about how your stars would be on the rise if you got elected Bombayrsquos mayor after allThe exquisite insides of the BMC HQ feel like hardrock music set to Victorian gothic architecture From the outside you know it first from the majestic statue of Sir Pherozeshah Mehta that for the year it got placed 1923 Vithalbhai wouldrsquove unveiled itAlso a lawyer Pherozeshah aka lsquoLion of Bombayrsquo is widely regarded as the father of BMC having served as its first president or what was then the title for mayor in 1888Irsquom sure you know the mayor of New York City The only time you might hear of the mayor in Mumbai is for a landmark in Dadar that cabbies call lsquoMayur bungalowrsquoThis seafacing grand mansion is being converted into a museum for Balasaheb Thackeray mdash an open space open for public a delight so rare to Mumbai that I canrsquot wait for it to fully open alreadyWhat of the actual mayor whorsquoll get elected among the winning party of corporators at the BMC elections of January 15 That person reportedly gets a home within Byculla zooWhatrsquoll be her powers anyway No more than any of the 227 corporators Chairing meetings with whom is possibly her only real jobZohran Mamdani has greater influence on the Mumbai imagination than its actual mayor What about the local corporatorI first read about mine M West ward 153 Anil Ramchandra Patankar mdash whorsquos been elected multiple times from the areamdash for his name on the walls like an artistrsquos signature outside my Chembur home that hersquod once got artistically paintedIrsquod warmed up to him already Aesthetics is barely a panMumbai trait Nobody expects it either Anil has previously served as chairman of BEST as in the cityrsquos bus servicesEver since the ward has got reserved for ldquoOBCladiesrdquo There are more female 878 than male 822 candidates in the BMC electionsAnilrsquos wife Meenakshi is contesting from the seat He tells me ldquoThis was the partyrsquos decision and shersquos been with me in public life over twoandhalf decadesrdquoHe says hersquod been campaigning for two weeks straight once they filed the papers while having been in touch with key constituents including management committees of buildings ldquosocietiesrdquo all alongAnil feels ldquoIn one of the elections I won because the votes from the societies was more than my victory marginrdquoAnil belongs to Shiv Sena UBT In between he had left with Narayan Rane to join the Congress as corporator and returned to Shiv Sena mdash getting reelected in the bypolls regardlessHe seems a local doer fully invested in slum issues addressing ones obviously in greatergenuine needAnd when the politics is so close to the noseground I suspect ideologies hardly matter as much to the voting public let alone politiciansThe national commentariat hence were rudely surprised when BJPAIMIM even CongressBJP formed postpoll alliances subsequently aborted of course in the Ambernath and Akot local body elections earlier in JanuaryIrsquove extensively covered general elections in the past wherein the scale is way wider and the candidates sweeter still Powers erodes their brains only once they grab itBMC makes national news chiefly for its annual budget around R75000 crore more than several small states But the corporator as per Anil mainly receives Rs 2 crore a year as development fundsFor the most part they petition and petition through committees and sessions to BMC officers and commissioner mdash a bureaucrat who in turn reports to a bureaucrat and eventually the chief ministerStill itrsquos refreshing to hear this politicianrsquos demands and lifelong achievements over half an hour fixing ldquonalas hawkers specific footpaths hydraulic engineers for water batteries for solarpowered streetlights MRI scanhelliprdquoHis big promise is for a road to go around rather than through a maidaan he reclaimed from purportedly ldquoreservedrdquo land These seem realimmediate resolvable issues Globalnational concerns are above my municipal paygrade anywayWhether or not for Patankar and for whatever itrsquos worth mdash I am certainly voting in the BMC electionsMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass cultureHe tweets mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper