So, tomorrow is the voting day for our beloved ‘Mumbai mere jaan’. Will I vote? Oh, surely! Which party? Well the answer might surprise you. Will explain my answer to you with a concept. Suppose ,you weight 100 kgs and with all the modern techniques available you suddenly become 70 kgs in say, 2 months. What do you do at first? You change your wardrobe right? You give way to New Shirts, T-shirts, Jeans, your expensive suits (dont tell me you have still kept your marriage wala ‘coat’) and you replace even the last bought expensive inner wears which admerasured XXXL. But back of your mind, you have one fear. What if I fail to maintain this weight? I have spent huge amount of monies to buy my clothes then, which are of no use to me now… You do one thing, you remove one suitcase and dump all your old clothes and still retain them. Now this psychology… call it a basic human tendency..has happened to me since years. I still have a shirt which I had worn for my first date with wife in 2005.
Voting is going to be somewhat similar as to you getting fat. Our city’s Municipal Corporation undoubtedly was ruled by the Shivsena. Now that you have become more active in understanding politics of our country, state and now local, I would want you to experiment. The same thing I did when I went out shopping when I had lost oodles of weight. When I lost weight, my polo T-shirts made way to V-collared slim fit T-shirts. Because of the flat stomach, I had the confidence to roam in V-necked T-shirts, which I did not dare when I was fat and round. Today in stead of the V-necked T-shirts you have RTI, newspapers and various means to ask the authorities to be accountable to you. These are the tools which existed earlier but no one dared to use them. The understanding & the inclination towards country and your city was far less than it is today, thanks to these tools.
You can vote for the party that has been literally begging at your doorstep for votes to see if they actually can make a change. It is the not the end of the world, if you don’t vote for the Sena. These elections will happen again after 5 years. You haven’t thrown your old clothes right? They are there nah in your suitcase, packed! SO friends why not experiment? Let’s give some else a chance to perform. You never know, what’s in store for the city. If the MNS or the BJP or Congress even do 50% of what they have promised, Mumbai will become a better place to live, believe me!
I can vote for MNS for a change, as say anyone, I have seen Nashik change tremendously in last 5 years. The roads, the sewage and all the other Municipal facilities required for a city to run, is undoubtedly changed drastically and for the good. I might vote for BJP also. Say anyone, I have seen very closely these people run our Government for past 2.5 years now. Not a single Minister or Bureaucrat has dared to “eat” money the way everyone did pre 2014. Credit has to be given to our CM Fadnavis & even Uddhav Thackrey who maintained the decorum of running our government smoothly. Apart from few ministers, nothing major like that of irrigation scam or like that of Adarsh has surfaced till now. Bits & peaces, that’s OK now for us to digest. How will we, the Media, survive otherwise?
So vote for a change, for a change! I would have voted for the Sena but again apart from Hinduism and the “never-to-be forgotten-help” these Sena people have done to Mumbai during 92-93, I don’t think any other agenda of their, appeals me. No doubt, the Sena controlled BMC has given us the infrastructure we live today. It is not bad. But as I said, why not to experiment?
But to experiment, you need to get out of your homes. A lovely piece Dharmendra Jore has written in Mid-day in his column-Raag Darbari on this issue. Must say, in the past week have read all the interviews of CM Fadnavis, Uddhav Thackrey & Raj Thackrey appearing in all print mediums. CM Fadnavis was best covered by Dharmendra Jore of Mid-day in his chopper, Uddhav Thackrey by Meenal Baghel & Chaitanya Marpakwar of Mumbai Mirror and Raj Thackrey’s interview that by Naresh Kamath of HT. Rest of the papers just wrote what was spoken. These people made it sound like an interview. Oh, not to forget the interview of Aditya Thackrey by Sanjeev Shivadekar again by the Mid-day was worth the read.
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