Broken Cities, Hollowed Polls

The battle for Maharashtra’s civic polls has reduced a test of urban service delivery to a tawdry spectacle of defections, deal-making and power without purpose.

As 29 municipal corporations in Maharashtra head to the polls, the political discourse should ideally be anchored in the gritty realities of everyday life like water woes, sanitation, crumbling infrastructure and traffic congestion. Yet, the run-up to these elections has traded civic accountability for a vulgar scramble for power. The public infighting and blatant opportunism served to underscore how local self-government is being hollowed out.

Between the frantic brawls for tickets and the shifting loyalties, the core mission of urban administration has been lost. This spectacle lays bare a disturbing crisis of purpose where municipal bodies are no longer viewed as vehicles for governance. When the ballot box is treated as a trophy to be captured, it is the citizen who loses the right to a liveable city.

Municipal corporations are meant to be the closest point of contact between citizens and the state. Their mandate is not ideological grandstanding but service delivery. Yet, the political churn preceding these elections suggests that governance has been relegated to the margins. Candidates switching parties at the eleventh hour have become emblematic of a political culture where ideology is elastic and loyalty conditional.

Politics of Convenience

The BJP, which attracted the highest number of aspirants for these elections, has also seen the maximum defections and instances of rebellion. While the party’s organisational machinery and leadership interventions have contained the immediate damage, this should not be mistaken for the absence of risk. Suppressed resentment among denied aspirants often reappears in subtler forms like lukewarm campaigning, covert sabotage or post-election instability. Adding to the unpredictability is the way state-level alliances have splintered and realigned at the local level. In several civic bodies, factions of the NCP have charted their own course, contesting separately or in selective coordination, while though being a part of the Mahayuti government at the state level, the Shinde-led Shiv Sena and Ajit Pawar’s NCP have joined forces in select Municipal Corporations to challenge the BJP.

While the Mahayuti partners have engaged in friendly contests in some municipal corporations, the opposition Mahavikas Aghadi (MVA) has descended into disarray, failing to forge any coherent action plan or common front. Meanwhile, Raj Thackeray’s MNS and Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena have joined forces in certain contests, creating an unusual convergence of erstwhile competitors.

The opportunistic movement of candidates has turned what should have been a serious democratic exercise into a farce. When political identities are shed and adopted overnight, voters are left struggling to decipher what parties and candidates actually stand for.

This erosion of credibility is compounded by the conduct of political alliances. Parties that are partners in power at the state level have openly turned adversarial in local elections, trading accusations and invective, even as they continue to share power in Mumbai. The contradiction is glaring. Alliances appear driven not by shared vision or policy coherence but by convenience, reinforcing public cynicism about the sincerity of political commitments. Equally disturbing are reports of tainted candidates, manipulation of nomination processes, swallowing or locking away of forms and candidates being elected unopposed. The constant reshuffling exposes how local politics prioritises short-term gain over principle, forcing citizens to make sense of a maze of opportunism.

Voters as Spectators

Amid this frenzy of political manoeuvring, the common voter has been reduced to a bystander. In a real circus, spectators marvel at acrobats and ‘boneless’ performers for their skill and flexibility, enjoying the spectacle. In Maharashtra’s political circus, all the acrobatics serve ambition, not ideals, leaving citizens frustrated and powerless. Ironically, Municipal politics should be closest to people’s everyday concerns. Urban governance demands serious debate on water security, waste management, climate resilience, public transport and public health. Yet, these issues are almost entirely absent from campaign discourse, overshadowed by ego clashes and partisan point-scoring, while campaigns are dominated by personal attacks and crude rhetoric that few voters care about.

The consequences of dysfunctional local governance are not abstract. The recent Indore incident, where people reportedly lost their lives due to contaminated drinking water, is a grim reminder of what failure at the municipal level can mean. In its aftermath, corporators, administrators and bureaucrats engaged in a familiar blame game. The removal of the Commissioner offered the appearance of accountability, but the larger structural questions of oversight, planning and political responsibility remain unanswered. Indore underscores a fundamental truth that local bodies are not arenas merely to be conquered for political leverage but service-delivery institutions whose failures can have fatal consequences. Treating them as extensions of party power rather than as institutions of governance is a dangerous distortion of their purpose.

What is missing in Maharashtra’s political discourse is a credible, long-term vision for making cities liveable. Instead of competing over ideas to improve urban life, parties are locked in a contest for control. Unsurprisingly, citizens remain sceptical that anything will change once the votes are counted. The cynicism surrounding these elections may not be new, but it has reached a point where voter disengagement becomes a real risk.

If local democracy is to regain meaning, voters will have to look beyond emotional appeals and partisan loyalties. The choice before them is not merely between parties, but between a politics of spectacle and a politics of service. Municipal elections are not a rehearsal for higher office but about the quality of life in cities. Maharashtra’s local body polls have exposed how far politics has drifted from this basic truth. Reclaiming municipal institutions from the grip of political theatrics will not be easy. But it is a task that must begin with informed and vigilant voters.

(The writer is a political commentator. Views personal.)