Congress plays street smart to campaign for polls

With the civic elections round the corner, political parties are leaving no stone unturned to reach out to their voters. As campaigning gets fierce and parties compete to gain support, they have started using social media, online distribution of party manifestos and virtual meetings as new ways of campaigning.

A group of youngsters however aim to bring the classic method of spreading the message back into the mainstream for the upcoming civic body election campaigning. Armed with props and colourful costumes, a bunch of 10 to 15 young men and women, mostly college students are performing street plays across the city to campaign for the Congress party.

The idea, a brainchild of Mumbai Congress chief Sanjay Nirupam has been conceptualised by Mandar Shinde, who has directed a number of Marathi plays in the past. By reinventing the form, this young brigade has been successful in attracting huge crowds across major public locations in the city.

Each performance lasts for about 18 minutes and shows references to the city's problems. "The idea was to do something different this time. While most parties are concentrating on building their social media presence, we thought of reinventing the old method of reaching out to people — street plays and public performances. This form has tremendous potential. What we want to say reaches out more effectively to the audiences and they remember the message for a long time unlike social media messages" added Nirupam.

He then contacted Shinde who came up with the idea and directed a series of five small skits that are performed back to back in public places to highlight the issues in the city in the Sena rule and thus appeal voters to vote for the Congress party candidates.

"We have reinvented street plays by introducing a few stylised elements like elaborate costumes, recorded music and rewording popular songs. We are successful in pulling huge crowds as the issues we take up belong to the common residents of the city. From the problem of overflowing drains to the unnecessary costs involved in bringing the penguins to the city, we try to highlight all the ways in which the Sena has failed to tackle simple issues in the city," added Shinde.

The group has so far performed in a hundred plus locations and have a line up of five to six performances everyday. "We take stock of the public sentiment in the locality before performing. Also some spots that are crowded are identified by the candidate and we try to perform there to pull crowds" said Pritesh Manjalkar, a performer from the group.

Another member of the group Shraddha Dhamankar, a first year student of arts at MD College said that it was a learning experience. "As a student, campaigning for a party by highlighting several local issues is a great learning experience," said Dhamankar.