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By:

Quaid Najmi

4 January 2025 at 3:26:24 pm

Seventy-six mayors ruled BMC since 1931

After four years, Mumbai to salute its first citizen Kishori Pednekar Vishwanath Mahadeshwar Snehal Ambekar Sunil Prabhu Mumbai: As the date for appointing Mumbai’s First Citizen looms closer, various political parties have adopted tough posturing to foist their own person for the coveted post of Mayor – the ‘face’ of the country’s commercial capital. Ruling Mahayuti allies Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Shiv Sena have vowed that the city...

Seventy-six mayors ruled BMC since 1931

After four years, Mumbai to salute its first citizen Kishori Pednekar Vishwanath Mahadeshwar Snehal Ambekar Sunil Prabhu Mumbai: As the date for appointing Mumbai’s First Citizen looms closer, various political parties have adopted tough posturing to foist their own person for the coveted post of Mayor – the ‘face’ of the country’s commercial capital. Ruling Mahayuti allies Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Shiv Sena have vowed that the city will get a ‘Hindu Marathi’ person to head India’s richest civic body, while the Opposition Shiv Sena (UBT)-Maharashtra Navnirman Sena also harbour fond hopes of a miracle that could ensure their own person for the post. The Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) optimism stems from expectations of possible political permutations-combinations that could develop with a realignment of forces as the Supreme Court is hearing the cases involving the Shiv Sena-Nationalist Congress Party this week. Catapulted as the largest single party, the BJP hopes to install a first ever party-man as Mayor, but that may not create history. Way back in 1982-1983, a BJP leader Dr. Prabhakar Pai had served in the top post in Mumbai (then Bombay). Incidentally, Dr. Pai hailed from Udupi district of Karnataka, and his appointment came barely a couple of years after the BJP was formed (1980), capping a distinguished career as a city father, said experts. Originally a Congressman, Dr. Pai later shifted to the Bharatiya Janata Party, then back to Congress briefly, founded the Janata Seva Sangh before immersing himself in social activities. Second Administrator The 2026 Mayoral elections have evoked huge interest not only among Mumbaikars but across the country as it comes after nearly four years since the BMC was governed by an Administrator. This was only the second time in the BMC history that an Administrator was named after April 1984-May 1985. On both occasions, there were election-related issues, the first time the elections got delayed for certain reasons and the second time the polling was put off owing to Ward delimitations and OBC quotas as the matter was pending in the courts. From 1931 till 2022, Mumbai has been lorded over by 76 Mayors, men and women, hailing from various regions, backgrounds, castes and communities. They included Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Parsis, Sikhs, even a Jew, etc., truly reflecting the cosmopolitan personality of the coastal city and India’s financial powerhouse. In 1931-1932, the Mayor was a Parsi, J. B. Boman Behram, and others from his community followed like Khurshed Framji Nariman (after whom Nariman Point is named), E. A. Bandukwala, Minoo Masani, B. N. Karanjia and other bigwigs. There were Muslims like Hoosenally Rahimtoola, Sultan M. Chinoy, the legendary Yusuf Meherally, Dr. A. U. Memon and others. The Christian community got a fair share of Mayors with Joseph A. D’Souza – who was Member of Constituent Assembly representing Bombay Province for writing-approving the Constitution of India, M. U. Mascarenhas, P. A. Dias, Simon C. Fernandes, J. Leon D’Souza, et al. A Jew Elijah Moses (1937-1938) and a Sikh M. H. Bedi (1983-1984), served as Mayors, but post-1985, for the past 40 years, nobody from any minority community occupied the august post. During the silver jubilee year of the post, Sulochana M. Modi became the first woman Mayor of Mumbai (1956), and later with tweaks in the rules, many women ruled in this post – Nirmala Samant-Prabhavalkar (1994-1995), Vishakha Raut (997-1998), Dr. Shubha Raul (March 2007-Nov. 2009), Shraddha Jadhav (Dec. 2009-March 2012), Snehal Ambedkar (Sep. 2014-March 2017). The last incumbent (before the Administrator) was a government nurse, Kishori Pednekar (Nov. 2019-March 2022) - who earned the sobriquet of ‘Florence Nightingale’ of Mumbai - as she flitted around in her full white uniform at the height of the Covid-19 Pandemic, earning the admiration of the citizens. Mumbai Mayor – high-profile post The Mumbai Mayor’s post is considered a crucial step in the political ladder and many went on to become MLAs, MPs, state-central ministers, a Lok Sabha Speaker, Chief Ministers and union ministers. The formidable S. K. Patil was Mayor (1949-1952) and later served in the union cabinets of PMs Jawaharlal Nehru, Lah Bahadur Shastri and Indira Gandhi; Dahyabhai V. Patel (1954-1955) was the son of India’s first Home Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel; Manohar Joshi (1976-1977) became the CM of Maharashtra, later union minister and Speaker of Lok Sabha; Chhagan Bhujbal (1985-1986 – 1990-1991) became a Deputy CM.

Will AI Save the Planet?

AI Save the Planet

Optimistic advocates for AI say this environmentally costly technology will become more sustainable with time. We can use AI more efficiently, and explore less energy-intensive designs inspired by the human brain. We can build data centres more sustainably, using wood or low-carbon concrete and steel. The heat from the data centres can warm homes in the local area. Of course, if we start using AI systems too widely (including where we don't really need them), the growth might outweigh any of these potential gains in efficiency.


But recently, I've been hearing another argument: that AI itself is tackling climate change. AI can help to model wildfires, optimise energy consumption to stabilise the grid, accelerate the development of low-carbon materials, and much more. My research team recently published a report that digs into these claims – and found some cause for concern.


As it turns out, it's difficult to compare the environmental impacts of asking AI to carry out a task versus asking people. Take writing and making art. One study says that it is much more environmentally friendly for AI to do these creative tasks than humans. But one of its methods for investigating this is to allocate a slice of the carbon footprint from all human activities to the creative activity. By this logic, there would be the same carbon emissions from an hour's work by an artist, a dairy farmer, a billionaire CEO, or an ecologist restoring a wetland.


A related paper acknowledges the simplification and instead allocates carbon just for the electricity a human consumes. The authors say this is a practical approach to carbon accounting. Establishing a fair comparison between human and AI work is hard because the tasks may look alike, but their underlying processes are fundamentally different. What about the current total carbon impact of AI? Another paper, partly funded by Microsoft, mentioned that AI is today responsible for just 0.01 per cent of global carbon emissions.


When we looked closer, we found this figure was based on the emissions of one year's AI server sales by Nvidia – the biggest manufacturer of such hardware – as estimated in one analysis. This prediction hasn't been verified, and if it is accurate, it wouldn't include AI being run on servers installed in previous years. When contacted for comment, some of the authors said that this estimate wasn't the article's main focus. Assessing the climate impacts of AI is complicated because we don't know how future AI models will be built, operated and used.


Another study reviewing AI's sustainability benefits cited several other articles that, in our view, appeared to feature mistakes – like referring to studies to back up their claims which did not contain relevant information. AI systems sometimes make mistakes – known as “hallucinations” – like when Microsoft Copilot accused a journalist of committing the crimes he had reported on. So we asked the authors if they had used an AI to write the article. They dismissed this idea and stood by the integrity of their review. They agreed that not all of the AI sustainability solutions their review referred to can be supported by existing studies. But they said that they had also included predictions about what AI might one day be capable of, based on their own expert judgement, which they said was standard practice.


Questions to ask about AI

Meanwhile, we should avoid lumping all kinds of AI together. There are in fact diverse forms of AI: big, small, discriminative, generative, machine learning, symbolic and more. I can be excited about an AI that excels at counting carrots, and helps farmers to plant them more effectively, without offering a blanket endorsement of all AI systems.


There are different types of climate action too. Climate mitigation is about getting carbon emissions down to net zero to stop global warming. Climate adaptation is about learning to live and thrive in a warmer world. We need both.


AI for climate adaptation is very welcome indeed (say, helping us to increase carrot yields, despite more volatile weather). But it doesn't simply offset the carbon cost of AI. It would be like comparing apples with oranges (or carrots). It's a tricky calculation to make, one with political and ethical dimensions.

-The Conversation

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