#dnaEdit: AAP prospects in Mumbai

The ripple effects of the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) historic win in Delhi are likely to be felt in Mumbai as well. Rejuvenated by an overwhelming mandate in the national capital, a confident AAP has now turned its focus on the financial capital. If Arvind Kejriwal and his compatriots play it right, Mumbai is there for the taking. The Maharashtra wing of the party which had contributed significantly in the Delhi victory — by raising money and conducting door-to-door campaigns — sees an opportunity in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections in 2017.

Its confidence is not misplaced. The richest civic body, controlled by the BJP-Sena combine, has consistently failed to deliver. The BMC is a source of much discontent. Plagued by under-performance and mismanagement, its contribution towards the city’s development has always been overshadowed by allegations of corruption among corporators. The BMC employees, notorious for the astronomical bribes they demand for the simplest of permissions, appear undeterred by the occasional crackdowns by the anti-corruption bureau (ACB). The bureau had conducted 57 raids in 2014, and 63 BMC employees were caught red-handed taking bribes. The politician-babu-builder nexus has corroded people’s faith in the BMC. 

Mumbai’s decline is visible in the poor conditions of roads and sidewalks, in the pitiable state of the civic schools and hospitals, in the half-hearted efforts at waste management and in the acute lack of public toilets and open spaces. The sprawling slums, which house nearly 60 per cent of the population, have limited access to basic amenities. But they will now have to pay additional water tax to the BMC, which is contemplating levying tax on slum properties. Mumbai’s unregulated real estate market has resulted in soaring property prices and rents, forcing the poor and the middle class to move out into the distant suburbs. A city sharply polarised along class and communal lines is in need of hope. AAP, with its radical brand of politics, could be the answer to the city’s long list of woes. It can turn Mumbai around by instituting a culture of transparency and accountability in the BMC.

The party is gearing up for the battle where it will be pitted against the BJP and its rabble-rouser partner the Shiv Sena. The opposition to AAP will be fierce because the same alliance also rules Maharashtra. Sena supremo Uddhav Thackeray, who had hailed the Delhi verdict and scoffed at the Modi wave, won’t think twice before resorting to disruptive politics to scuttle AAP’s chances.

AAP will have to build from scratch in Mumbai as it did in Delhi. Despite fielding candidates in all the 48 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra in 2014, its voteshare barely 2.2 per cent. However, its strategy to woo voters appears formidable. Using the issue of corruption as the main electoral plank, AAP will roll out its campaign by conducting social audits in all the 24 wards of the BMC. This would involve monitoring BMC’s work such as laying of roads and pipelines and exerting pressure on the civic body to blacklist contractors who execute shoddy jobs but are rarely punished. 

AAP already has an experienced army of 1,200 volunteers from the state who had worked intensively in the Delhi campaign. Mumbai also has a vast section of the population — comprising youth, Muslims, migrant labourers and slumdwellers — which has grown weary of the politics of traditional parties. If AAP successfully taps this reserve, as it had done in Delhi, it can script a similar success story.