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By:

Abhijit Mulye

21 August 2024 at 11:29:11 am

Shinde dilutes demand

Likely to be content with Deputy Mayor’s post in Mumbai Mumbai: In a decisive shift that redraws the power dynamics of Maharashtra’s urban politics, the standoff over the prestigious Mumbai Mayor’s post has ended with a strategic compromise. Following days of resort politics and intense backroom negotiations, the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena has reportedly diluted its demand for the top job in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), settling instead for the Deputy Mayor’s post. This...

Shinde dilutes demand

Likely to be content with Deputy Mayor’s post in Mumbai Mumbai: In a decisive shift that redraws the power dynamics of Maharashtra’s urban politics, the standoff over the prestigious Mumbai Mayor’s post has ended with a strategic compromise. Following days of resort politics and intense backroom negotiations, the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena has reportedly diluted its demand for the top job in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), settling instead for the Deputy Mayor’s post. This development, confirmed by high-ranking party insiders, follows the realization that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) effectively ceded its claims on the Kalyan-Dombivali Municipal Corporation (KDMC) to protect the alliance, facilitating a “Mumbai for BJP, Kalyan for Shinde” power-sharing formula. The compromise marks a complete role reversal between the BJP and the Shiv Sena. Both the political parties were in alliance with each other for over 25 years before 2017 civic polls. Back then the BJP used to get the post of Deputy Mayor while the Shiv Sena always enjoyed the mayor’s position. In 2017 a surging BJP (82 seats) had paused its aggression to support the undivided Shiv Sena (84 seats), preferring to be out of power in the Corporation to keep the saffron alliance intact. Today, the numbers dictate a different reality. In the recently concluded elections BJP emerged as the single largest party in Mumbai with 89 seats, while the Shinde faction secured 29. Although the Shinde faction acted as the “kingmaker”—pushing the alliance past the majority mark of 114—the sheer numerical gap made their claim to the mayor’s post untenable in the long run. KDMC Factor The catalyst for this truce lies 40 kilometers north of Mumbai in Kalyan-Dombivali, a region considered the impregnable fortress of Eknath Shinde and his son, MP Shrikant Shinde. While the BJP performed exceptionally well in KDMC, winning 50 seats compared to the Shinde faction’s 53, the lotter for the reservation of mayor’s post in KDMC turned the tables decisively in favor of Shiv Sena there. In the lottery, the KDMC mayor’ post went to be reserved for the Scheduled Tribe candidate. The BJP doesn’t have any such candidate among elected corporatros in KDMC. This cleared the way for Shiv Sena. Also, the Shiv Sena tied hands with the MNS in the corporation effectively weakening the Shiv Sena (UBT)’s alliance with them. Party insiders suggest that once it became clear the BJP would not pursue the KDMC Mayor’s chair—effectively acknowledging it as Shinde’s fiefdom—he agreed to scale down his demands in the capital. “We have practically no hope of installing a BJP Mayor in Kalyan-Dombivali without shattering the alliance locally,” a Mumbai BJP secretary admitted and added, “Letting the KDMC become Shinde’s home turf is the price for securing the Mumbai Mayor’s bungalow for a BJP corporator for the first time in history.” The formal elections for the Mayoral posts are scheduled for later this month. While the opposition Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA)—led by the Shiv Sena (UBT)—has vowed to field candidates, the arithmetic heavily favors the ruling alliance. For Eknath Shinde, accepting the Deputy Mayor’s post in Mumbai is a tactical retreat. It allows him to consolidate his power in the MMR belt (Thane and Kalyan) while remaining a partner in Mumbai’s governance. For the BJP, this is a crowning moment; after playing second fiddle in the BMC for decades, they are poised to finally install their own “First Citizen” of Mumbai.

How do I manage my household Waste?

Updated: Oct 21, 2024

household Waste

The domestic waste, generally regarded as the Municipal Solid Waste, is generated at the household level through various human activities which havealready been discussed in the previous articles in this column.

Now, we will try to understand the impact of mismanagement of this waste on the environmental, social and economical and what should we do at the individual level and at the community level.

We generate ‘heterogeneous’ kind of waste at the domestic level as it is usually a mixture of wet waste and dry waste which is eventually disposed off only to get accumulated in the by-lanes and roadsides.

Let us assume that in a particular area or neighborhood of a city, there are about 20000 houses, each house generating approximately 2 kg of ‘mixed’ waste everyday amounting to total 40000 kg of waste.

Now this 40000 kgs of waste will be first dumped openly alongside of some road or by-lane in that neighborhood. It will be left there at least for a day or so till the local cleaning staff, appointed by the urban local body, arrives there at a stipulated time to fetch that load of garbage which will be dumped in a truck. That truck will then move to another such location where more or less same volume of garbage will have piled up. Finally, when that truck is filled to its capacity, it will travel some distance to reach its destination, that is a dumping yard.

A dumping yard is a piece of open land reserved for dumping the city garbage. Before moving ahead, let us visit a garbage heap amounting to 40000 kgs lying along the roadside.

Look there, can you see some animal activity there? Yes. There are crows, there are dogs, there are rats scurrying around and then there are house flies and other insects along with the humans labelled Rag Pickers. And oh my god!

We can see a few cows searching through that heap of garbage. What are the cows doing here? No wonder. People like you and me in the neighborhood have stored and packed their left over stale food and other eatables in a plastic bag which has ended up eventually into this garbage.

Poor cows get attracted towards such bags containing food very carelessly thrown by the people and in an attempt to consume the food inside that bag, they end up in swallowing the plastic bag itself. The cow gets terribly sick and eventually die most of the times as plastic is very much unnatural ‘food’ for her.

The irony here is that we consider cows as our Holy Mother and treat her with utmost respect in our culture. Killing a cow for beef is not acceptable to us. It is beyond our tolerance limits. If that is the case, then we should think a hundred times before exposing our Holy Mother to such heinous act of disposing the food waste packed in plastic bags!

(The writer is an environment specialist. Views personal.)

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