Shakti Salgaokar

DNA’s My Locality My Voice is an initiative meant to connect citizens to their local activists, aspiring candidates and political party representatives. Every weekend, the editorial and marketing team of this newspaper gets together local authorities and residents of the ward they’re holding the meet in. So far, I have attended two of these events and it is remarkable how angry and frustrated the residents are with the lack of action from the local authorities on several issues such as water shortage, encroachment, bad footpaths and roads, illegal construction and even the problem of rickshaw drivers refusing fares.

The meet last Saturday at Pravinbhai Thakkar Auditorium in Vile Parle (E) was particularly passionate. The event slated to start at 10 am eventually got underway by around noon. The stage was packed with citizen representatives, aspiring candidates, serving Municipal Corporators and Party representatives. As each of the dignitaries presented the problems of the area (like we didn’t know!), they freely commented on the low-turnout of Corporators. (Of the 28 Corporators in the area, only one had shown up at the start of the event)

While the discussion progressed in a slightly civilized manner, it took just a few questions to irk the audience. “What about the rickshaw drivers crowding the streets?” “what about encroachment on the road?” screamed the audience, demanding definitive answers to their individual problems and questions. The dignitaries on the stage merrily sent the citizens on a wild goose chase of sorts by blaming, MMRDA, MHADA and the State government for the inefficiencies and lack of action. What ensued was a chaos, with almost all questions going unanswered and certain members of the audience making corruption allegations against the Political Party representatives and the politicos responding in an equally aggressive manner.

While DNA makes it clear at the onset that the platform will only present your problems to the authorities to consider and that no definitive answers can be expected immediately, it is probably one of the rare opportunities where the citizens get to address their problems in front of these office holders and they find it hard to contain their frustration.

The resultant chaos makes it impossible to find an answer to problems. As one of our team-members made a comparison to the Parliament to shame people into calming down, I realized that no solution comes out of any of our assemblies for the same reason. We listen very little, we don’t take ownership of problems to solve them but instead we focus on blaming the others for failure and most of all, we fail to respect the other person and where they’re coming from.

That said, the silver lining here is that there are such platforms for people to participate in and Party representatives as well as citizens turn up in decent numbers. Also, grievances and issues are conveyed and the aspiring candidates now know that there are people out to demand answers! Will this force them to be responsible with their job? Of course, it will! As an impact of our programme towards the second half of the event, a total of four corporators were seated on the dias.

We will be hosting more such events for other wards and as a citizen who wants to see a better set of representatives elected (the current ones are hopelessly corrupt and ineffecient) I urge you to register and attend these events. Here is the link to register online: http://www.dnaindia.com/dnaplus/civicmeet/