Click to play videoOn Thursday, voters from 10 municipal corporations across Maharashtra came out to cast their ballot in a keenly-contested election.
Several very interesting voting patterns emerged from across the state, specially from India’s financial capital Mumbai where it’s a close battle between the Shiv Sena-BJP combine and the Congress-NCP, fighting it out for India’s richest municipal body - the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation.
Voters came out to exercise their franchise in the posh as well as middle and lower-middle class areas.
BMC controls the day-to-day existence of over 120 million people, has an annual turnover of Rs 12,000 crore.
Many civic watchdogs bodies in Mumbai held campaigns on the performance of the corporators and urged Mumbaikars to exercise their right to vote.
But though Mumbai – cutting across class-lines - came out to vote, the larger picture across India shows a disturbing trend, an indication of how apathetic urban India is towards elections.
Number blunder
In 2004 Lok Sabha elections, compared to an overall national average of 58 per cent, Delhi recorded a voter turnout of just 47 per cent, Mumbai was at 47.1 per cent, Chennai’s voting percentage was 47.5 per cent, Bangalore was at 51 per cent the only saving grace was Kolkata, which saw huge voter turnout of 70 per cent.
As Maharashtra gears up for the poll results, it’s perhaps apt to question if the urban elite is increasingly becoming a non-voting class?
That was the topic of discussion on the show Face The Nation on Thursday.
With CNN-IBN’s Sagarika Ghose conducting the show, on the panel to lead the discussion were celebrity quizmaster Derek O’Brien, former chief election commissioner T S Krishnamurthy and animal right activist Ambika Shukla.
Arguing that in India that it’s essentially poor of India who go out to vote, T S Krishnamurthy said that in urban areas, there are certain amount of indifference mainly because people don’t to spend some time to go to polling stations to exercise their votes.
“People should realise that every vote is an important vote and voting is not a waste of time. Although there is a sign of slight change, but despite the Election Commission spreading message, large number of voters don’t seems to be taking active interest,” said Krishnamurthy.
On the issue of lack of educated youth in politics, Derek O’Brien said, politics had become a dirty word. “People think two kinds of people join politics - one, who has nothing to do or those who have achieved something and have lots of time in their hands. And to get people interested there is a need to go to schools and colleges to make them aware because too much of political issues are discussed in cocktail parties, which is of no use,” he said, adding that “unfortunate things” like bogus voter lists aggregate the problem.
No takers for poll dance
Ignorance about civic issues is another reason why people – essentially the middle-class – prefers not to vote.
When asked if she knows the name of her Municipal Corporator, Ambika Shukla said, “No, I am ashamed to say that, but I don’t,” arguing that, “The issues that municipal elections involve are not associated with urban educated class, which are generally basic issues like land, water etc. So, two main reasons that keep the urban educated middle class away are - firstly, issues are not relevant to you life and secondly, the people standing for the elections don’t inspire you.”
Giving the credit to citizen groups for larger elite voter turnout, actress Shabana Azmi - after casting her vote – spoke to CNN-IBN over phone - and credited the citizen groups with mobilising the elite and making them aware that it was important for them to go out and caste their vote.
Terming the role of citizen groups and media as concerted effort, she also said, “We are at a point where citizens are recognising that citizens are active participants rather than passive recipients”.
Does politics matter?
So are the Mumbai’s elite participating a little more in the political process or they are still living in their small private world - where politics doesn’t matter at all? “There is a huge change in the attitude of the elite and there are more people turnout,” said Azmi.
Does India’s poor participate in politics much more than the rich unlike the worldwide trend of the participation of rich and educated rather than the poor? “I think there is a contradictory force operating. There are both rich and poor are taking active interest but the only difference is as the interest grows with some, interest goes down with some people, because there is a gradual deterioration in the faith of people in the political parties as well as in the politicians. I think time has come for us to review the entire political system,” said Krishnamurthy.
He also said that there was an urgent need for promoting confidence in politicians.
So is the “urban middle class feeling isolated” syndrome for real? Is politics just a numbers game, with nothing to do with issues?
“People don’t see any result and also there is no involvement and there is no feedback. And there is no feeling of achievement if one become part of the process and people even don’t know how to go about it. There is a need of making people aware at educational level as how to participate and what their participation mean,” argues Shukla.
As the great Indian middle-class debate rages, it’s only for time to tell whether the relatively better voting pattern of Mumbai will make any difference to the rather pathetic nationwide statistics.
Final results of the SMS poll:
Is the urban elite a non-voting class?
Yes: 80 per cent
No: 20 per cent
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