General Elections-2014: Mumbai Hits Second Half Century In 25 Years!

After all the fears and speculation Mumbai, the financial capital of India, has recorded a voting percentage of 52.6% on the polling day yesterday for General Elections-2014. Although the figure is much lower than the national average and that of 65% recorded in the political capital of Delhi this reflects a 10% surge over the dismal voting of 41.4% in 2009.  This is the city’s second half century during the last 25 years with its first one coming in 1998 when the percentage was just over fifty. Before 1991 the voting percentage in Mumbai never fell below fifty percent and the city’s highest ever turnout of 68% was recorded in 1967 General Elections. Voter apathy grew largely after 1989 and various reasons like impact of economic liberalization, decline of the working class movement, closure of the cotton mills, constant shifting or elimination of slums, migratory population and even summer vacation during poll period are cited for this. This dismal voting in 2009 could also be explained in terms of the city losing faith in political leaders of all parties following the horrific Mumbai terror attack of 26/11/2008. 

Now speculation is ripe as to why Mumbaikars showed a willingness to vote in large numbers and whom this is going to benefit. One reason that comes to mind immediately is the tremendous public awareness campaigns undertaken by the Election Commission with active support from the media telling and urging Mumbaikars to exercise their democratic right on a daily basis. Then there is the latest voting option of NOTA (None Of The Above) thanks to which you can press that button to reject all candidates if they do not qualify in your view. Sulking and angry voters who sat at home on earlier occasions can now come out to exercise their democratic right and express themselves. 

Sachin Tendulkar Votes

Historically, at least since 1977, whenever Mumbai voted comparatively better there was a change of government. Post-Emergency in 1977 voting turnout in Mumbai was more than sixty percent and this reflected in rejecting Congress and bringing in the Janata Party Government under Prime Minister late Morarji Desai. The Janata Party messed up the public mandate leading to mid-term polls in 1980 and the angry city sulked. Post Indira Gandhi assassination and the tremendous national sympathy wave Mumbai recorded a turnout of more than 56% and brought back the Congress government in 1984-85 General Elections. Following Bofors Scam and growing terrorism Mumbai recorded more than 57% voting and rejected the Congress government in 1989 General Elections. Even in 2004 General Elections voting percentage was only a little higher than normal at 47% and that amounted to throwing the BJP led NDA government out of power. If this anti-incumbency trend is consistent then this time also the higher voting in Mumbai could spell trouble for the ruling combine of Congress-NCP in Maharashtra. Leaders of the ruling combine are quick to rebut the anti-incumbency or wave-for-change theory ascribing the higher percentage to an upsurge of voting by certain Muslim and backward communities. For witnessing the true significance of the Mumbai half century we will have to wait till 16^thMay, 2014 when counting of votes start and results come out.

General Elections-2014: A Saga Of The Three Ps!

Five polling phases of the 9-phase General or Lok Sabha (Lower House of Indian Parliament) Elections-2014 have been completed. The sixth phase polling is being conducted on Thursday, the 24^th of April. In this phase Mumbai too goes to poll with its six Lok Sabha seats. In this last phase of polling in Maharashtra there are 13 other seats including in Thane, Raigad, Nashik and Jalna-Aurangabad. When Maharashtra and Mumbai go to poll the malady of voter apathy comes in naturally since voting has been consistently low in these parts over the decades. Talking particularly about Mumbai the normal voting percentage has been around just 42% taking all kinds of poll into account. This General Elections things seem to be improving quite a bit, but about Mumbai fears are still there. Only tomorrow the scenario here would be clear. Anyway, we will come to this first P of our subject that is percentage of voting later.

The other two Ps are the absolute low points of this General Elections. First is personalized. Leaders of all political parties are getting extremely personal in their attacks and counterattacks. No kin of any candidate seems to be safe anymore. If someone is attacked for his rediscovered or existing wife then some other is attacked for the lack of a one. Similarly husbands, mothers, sons and even in-laws of candidates are being brought in to score more over one another as far as ‘antics’ or ‘the lack of it’ of their kin are concerned. The hapless voters are the mute spectators of such abusive missiles and they are at a total loss to understand what sort of political gains are being made out of these. We had already mentioned in these pages earlier that this time mutual attacks have plummeted to never-before lows and mere name-calling is driven out as an unnecessary detail of the past. Now the circus has stopped to be entertaining.

The most sinister P of our narrative is polarization. All political parties, major or ally or bully, are shamelessly indulging in the politics of communalism. One after the other political leaders in almost all parts are making hate speeches and divisive and inflammatory comments aimed mainly at polarizing the two major religious communities of the country. Their agenda or so-called manifestos are no longer national. They promise ‘things’ to be done for a particular community if voted to power. Those who want to come back to power are promising the opposite. ‘Revenge’ is also emerging as the underlying theme of ‘repairing’ things. Bans or restrictions have been imposed by the Election Commission of India and FIRs have been lodged too in some cases. But the leaders know well how ineffective these measures finally prove to be and so are hardly caring for these. Voters must take into account this unprecedented ‘low’ for the largest democracy of the world while exercising their democratic right.

The only highlight represented by one of the three Ps is percentage of voting thanks to the novel initiatives of the Election Commission and awareness campaigns. General Elections-2014 records high to very high voting percentages ranging from 70% to around 86% in various states of India that have voted so far. In Maharashtra the percentage has improved to around 65%, a 20% increase in some areas, so far. However, it is still low compared to other states or regions. More positively, in the Naxal or Maoists-affected regions citizens have voted fearlessly in large numbers.

Normally, high voting turnout is considered as an anti-incumbency wave. That is to say, people want a change in ruling political parties. However, due to the never-before polarization visibly obvious in the country some experts would like to ascribe this high percentage to polarization. This means that maybe due to desperation voters of a particular community want to ensure ‘their’ candidates win. We hope this is not the case. We hope the people of India are voting for an authentic and meaningful change. Amen!  

Crimes Against Women: Bollywood Villains Walking Out Real!

Even C-grade Bollywood (Hindi film industry based in Mumbai or earlier Bombay) movies show a kind of stark realism in terms of depraved, regressive and malignantly anti-woman villains. If you have been following Bollywood movies for at least the last three decades you must have noticed villains who when confronted with rapes committed (on screen) by their son/sons or male relatives normally say with pride, “He is a boy only…they commit mistakes man, please understand. In my prime time I too had done a lot of merrymaking. I’ll even burn this city to save my son!” These villains are dirty rich mostly being smugglers or business tycoons or plain dons and they carry the concerned ‘screen’ police force in their pockets. They do get punished in the end by the heroes, but after all the gory regressive oppressive chauvinistic feudalistic details shown gloriously by the filmmakers who definitely seem to pander to a sizeable male section of our society. However, you can hardly deny the ‘realism’ being portrayed with ‘painstaking’ details, particularly after you take notice of what has been happening in certain states of India like Uttar Pradesh in the perspective of the on-going General Elections of the country. This particular state of Uttar Pradesh has always been feudalistic and openly anti-woman—a point that we have mentioned here on several occasions.  Stiff opposition to Women Reservation Bill came from this state only cutting across all leaders of all political parties. Having easy access to modern weapons this kind of feudalistic practices is the most dangerous one and therefore we can say that Uttar Pradesh along with few other northern states are the worst possible enemies of womankind on our planet earth.

Veteran political leader of Uttar Pradesh, ex-Chief Minister and father of the present Chief Minister, Mulayam Singh Yadav  is the Samajwadi or Socialist Party (SP) of India Supremo, though his party is mostly full of anti-social or feudalistic elements. He seems to be severely pained by fast track courts delivering death or life sentences to horrible rapists in Delhi, in Mumbai and in other places of the country in the aftermath of the barbaric Delhi gangrape and the amendments in the criminal law that followed.  While asking for votes in an election campaign this great leader commented on the crimes of rape, “Boys are just boys…they naturally make mistakes. They should not be punished with death. Our party opposes the strict laws and the possible misuse of the same.” A national outrage erupted and even after that the great leader refused to apologize, so entrenched in his ‘beliefs’. What is more, his counterpart in Maharashtra, Abu Azmi, hardly caring for the outrage or sentiments blatantly decided to add to it, although one may say dictating a little more ‘balanced’ view. In an interview to a newspaper this fittingly ‘socialist’ leader reportedly said, “You see…the rapist is punished with death because he is guilty. But the woman or the rape survivor is equally guilty, and so both should be hanged. In fact all women, married or unmarried, having sex with a man with consent or being forced should be hanged.” His ‘solution’ encompasses hanging of the rape survivor too if not already murdered.

Well, this is the way our ‘leaders’ think of or about women. This abysmally shameful exploitative and perverted mentality prevails despite the national reawakening, despite the movement for prevention of crimes against women and despite the stricter laws being formulated. What can we do? We must carry on with our crusade nationwide and at this moment of elections we must vote against all such depraved animals of our society. India, the holy land of the Shakti cult or the revered Goddesses, we must rise up to the challenge, and restore and ensure full respect and complete safety for women.