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Commentary/Saisuresh Sivaswamy

Bombay looks global and turns local

It is a paradox like none other. The gateway to foreign institutional investment in the country, Bombay, is currently riding high on a wave of local sentiment. The thumping majority that the city's voters handed over to the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party combine in last week's civic election is only the latest pointer to a process that began when Manmohan Singh threw open the doors of the country to the second wave of foreign invasion, this time financial.

Although Bombay was the first urban centre to turn its gaze abroad even while securing firmly its local moorings, the process has quickly spread to other parts of the country as well. Politically, it has taken the form of the voter plumbing for regional forces, parties which he thinks will echo the local sentiment better in the corridors of power, as happened across the nation in last year's general election.

The world of information was among the first to record and reflect this paradoxical change in the country's commercial capital. As Manmohan Singh's credo gained ground in the city and the Sensex raced through the stratosphere, the clamour for local news grew louder, forcing publications to buttress their international coverage even while devoting more space to what was happening in one's own backyard.

And this process was taking place simultaneously with the growth of local cable television channels that focussed exclusively on the neighbourhood, be it Dandiya Raas or Ganpati visarzan. There is nothing peculiar about this trend, since through recorded history the world of information is always the first to first register and then influence trends in society.

Possibly because he runs an enormously popular chain of newspapers in Maharashtra, Shiv Sena pramukh Bal Thackeray was quick to perceive and seize upon this trend. Realising that increasingly local issues exercised the minds of a population that was more and more turning overseas, he has given his organisation that extra edge. It can be no one's case that the Congress party was routed in the Bombay municipal election because what happened in Ayodhya some years ago or because of the so-called elitist approach towards the economy under Manmohan Singh.

Where the Congress party failed miserably was in fulfilling the local aspirations of the city's voters, be it providing clean drinking water or eradicating corruption in the administration, for which it has been punished roundly.

Starting with the general election last year the voter has served notice that in any poll -- Lok Sabha, assembly or local bodies -- only those parties will be elected which represent her/his interest better and not be swayed by any other issue. The Congress has been unable to perceive this voter trend and continues to believe that raising larger issues will bring in the votes.

In other words, what the party needs to do is send across the message that it is serious about its own electoral revival by actively decentralising itself, free the various local units by giving them more autonomy in deciding upon poll-related issues, run the entire set-up in a more federal manner, and heed the grassroots's demand, especially where there is disenchantment with the local leadership, as was the case in Bombay.

Under this kind of a system, the Congress party in, say, Assam will be fighting elections over different issues from its counterpart in Tamil Nadu, except under unusual circumstances as happened in 1984 and 1991. Otherwise, there will be no single, national issue that the party will use as its election plank.

In Bombay the extent of voter disillusionment with the party can be gauged from the fact that the voter had reposed faith in it in 1992 only to see the Sena come to power through unconstitutional means. Ordinarily, the voter would have rejected the Sena the next time round, but the Congress had by then lost the mandate to govern. The message is clear for the city Congress leadership that spends any amount of time in global conclaves and bringing in citizens of the world to the city: Change your ways, or...

The message was first sent two years ago in the assembly election when the Congress won only one out of the 36 seats in the city. This was repeated last year when the party was routed in all the Lok Sabha constituencies, among the vanquished being the city Congress chief. But, no one took serious note of these signals.

The voter does not like rebuffs, and the Congress's central leadership, by ignoring these distress signals, has done incalculable harm to itself. Conversely, the new leadership in the city Congress has its task cut out: Focus on the city's woes aggressively and put the ruling combine on the mat over its administrative failure. This would also mean relegating issues like Ramesh Kini -- which has anyway been wholly rejected by the voters -- to the backburner.

The aim for the Bombay unit then would be Bombay, period, and not New Delhi. Unless the Congress party sheds its hangover from the pre-Independence days, when it was the only pan-Indian political entity and wake up to the new reality that regional issues have come to the fore and the popular demand is for a federal set-up, its future is doomed.

Will Congress president Sitaram Kesri have the courage to bring about such a radical change in the 112-year-old entity's outlook? Does he have any other choice before him? In the absence of a charismatic presence in the party whose appeal can help it transcend local issues, like the Gandhi family mystique, the Congress party president will otherwise be doing nothing but preside over its political liquidation.

How ironic it would be if that process were to begin with the electoral reverses the party has suffered in Bombay, the same city that saw the birth of a glorious movement and which culminated in 1947 in the country's independence!

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Saisuresh Sivaswamy
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