How to build a political stronghold: A case study of the Thakurs of the Vasai Virar civic body

A small, extremely localised political party, run by a menacing but at the same time benevolent politician, did to Vasai Virar in its municipal history in the past week what Aam Aadmi did to Delhi few months ago. Hitendra Thakur’s Bahujan Vikas Aghadi, snapped up as many as 106 of the 115 civic seats in the Vasai Virar Municipal Corporation and will now lord it over the city north of Mumbai much as it has for the past five years. If Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress won an unprecedented 404 parliamentary seats out of 533, and the fledgling AAP posted victories in 67 of the 70 seats in the Delhi, lower down in the democratic food chain, the BVA showed its all-pervasive presence. It seems to be a party that could, at the street level, best even the Shiv Sena. The message is not to be lost on the saffron party which tends to be bristle all the time. Vasai Virar has a population of 1.3 million, and is steadily growing. BVA’s supremo is a soft-spoken fifth-time MLA, Hitendra Thakur whose brother, ‘Bhai’ Thakur is seen as a terror and has had extremely rough time with the law. Hitendra’s son, Kshitij is in his second term in the Maharashtra legislature. In this elections, Pravina Hitendra Thakur was elected as the mayor, and a nephew, Pankaj Thakur has been ushered into the town hall with glowing predictions. [caption id=“attachment_2322102” align=“alignleft” width=“380” class=" “]  Image courtesy: Google Maps[/caption] Vasai Virar is a huge swath, which earlier had five municipal councils and several gram panchayats. They were amalgamated to form the Vasai Virar Municipal Corporation. It is a city under construction with huge patches under vegetable – much sought after in Mumbai - and paddy cultivation. The original residents resent urbanisation which brought in crowds and not much by way of facilities befitting a ‘corporation city’. The densities are only intensifying. ‘Rurban’ but swiftly turning urban is how the place could be best described. The fact that land is easily available and houses are much cheaper compared to Mumbai, makes it a developer/builder’s paradise. It is going through the same pangs which Navi Mumbai went through, including the fact that it is also in the grip of a family. Navi Mumbai’s overlords are Ganesh Naik and his family. They call the shots and are problem-solvers, including changing building codes. Naik was a minister for long – first with the Shiv Sena and then plighted his troth with Congress and when it split, shifted to Sharad Pawar’s NCP. One of his sons was an MP and another a minister. But at all times Naik had one person or the other from the extended family in the Navi Mumbai Corporation. A nephew, on the simple expedient of Vasai Virar is going precisely the same way. There are reasons why, and which also explain why a city listens to one piper, more or less. Indian feudal system is generally rural, small little bailiwicks where the most powerful – either a landed person, or a person who had secured some political prominence and linkages – call the shots. Like in Shripal Shukla’s Raag Darbari, the village vaidya has his hegemony. Democracy is his will and he says so to his nephew who is unfit to claim an elected post. They evolve into samiti chiefs, then MLAs and upwards, consolidating their hold. But this pattern emerging in two cities, and cheek-by-jowl to Mumbai, is rather odd, for they are unlike rural spaces. In both these cities, the voter turnout during any election is poor. A majority of the population is of migrants – intra-state, inter-state and those who are busy trying to survive that by rushing to Mumbai for work, don’t care. Citizen ownership of the cities is nothing. They just hand over the cities to whoever is powerful and savvy enough to grab it. In Vasai Virar, it was just under half the city’s voter strength. Dormitory nature of the city is one reason. Most come to work in Mumbai. They return to sleep after a hard day and a harder commute, and are confined to home trying to find some quality time with the family. In some families, the father is a weekend phenomenon; if both couple works, then the children are virtually in the charge of a maid. That does not inspire any involvement in the local affairs. Only second generations of migrants are likely to be concerned. Thakur had started as a local builder. His brother’s muscle drove fear into anyone not sufficiently cooperative. Now they have vast business interests. When the relatively poorer families flocked to Virar, the home of the Thakurs, they didn’t care about even missing civic amenities; a shelter is all they wanted. The city’s urbanisation graph is akin to Navi Mumbai’s during its initial years. To its credit, the BVA also did some work, and the city has a fairly good bus service which can’t be said of Thane, an older city. Earlier, Thakur’s writ ran across only Virar. When towns were amalgamated and villages merged to form the new civic body, the Thakurs too spread their wing over the expanded geography. By winning 55 of the 89 civic civic seats, in 2010, they laid the blueprint for a political model for a party – work at the street level, even if it turned out that most candidates for the corporators’ seats were millionaires. They support any celebrations – Ganpati to Govinda, and help anyone who asks, but retain their control with an iron hand. That is why, when Pravina – the richest among all candidates, with a declared wealth – was over Rs 100 cr. The other reason why no party wanted to field a candidate against it was under the belief that none, regardless of what they did, would win it. The Shiv Sena, the BJP, the Congress, the NCP – all which had political relationships with Hitendra Thakur one time or the other, left the field open to her – no contest. That implies the right to swagger, one suppers. Political control of the civic body has its spin-offs. Building control rules or willingness to wink at them, layouts, permissions, provision of basic facilities even if normally due but rendered as a favour in Indian system of patronage are the tools. No politician avoids exploiting the arrangements and the builders have special interest in civic bodies. They prefer to have their men there to make their businesses easier to run. In Navi Mumbai, one approaches Ganesh Naik to get civic matters attended to, not the municipal body. The interesting, and perhaps the crucial aspect of Hitendra Thakur’s political strategies, is that he does not rub the party in power in Maharashtra the wrong way. The successive governments since he has won the first elections, Thakur has always supported the party or alliance in power at crucial moments. They run the state, and he wants to run the developing urban space the way he wants, unimpeded.