Here’s something to learn from Kerala local body polls
Quiz: Who is your ward councillor? If you have the correct answer, you are in a minority. We, the urban residents of Tamil Nadu, complain endlessly about decaying civic amenities, but remain clueless about our civic representatives. And that is in stark contrast to our neighbours in Kerala.
The just-concluded local body elections in Kerala, the run-up of which I witnessed at close quarters for a week, was a celebration of voter power. Cutting across political affiliations, people grilled sitting councillors for their inefficiency and unfulfilled promises and extracted specific promises from the other contestants.
Former DGP R Sreelekha is among the BJP candidates who won in the Thiruvananthapuram corporation council election
Most of the voters in corporations, municipalities and panchayats knew the contestants of all the major alliances – LDF, UDF and NDA – by their first names and faces, their strengths and weaknesses. Incumbents who underperformed had a tough time. In the Ambalathara ward where my mother lives, I saw people taking up civic issues with BJP candidate Simi Jothish soon after she completed her campaign speech.
The ward had been with CPI for long, and the councillor had been all talk and no work. When it became a reserved ward for women last time, his wife S Geethakumari became the councillor and continued with her husband’s style. The result: Ambalathara voters elected the BJP candidate, for the first time.
Besides BJP’s rapid growth in Kerala’s capital city, public ire at LDF councillors enabled NDA to win 50 of the 101 seats in Thiruvananthapuram, which has been in the vice-like grip of the CPM-led LDF for 45 years. When a BJP member is likely sworn in as the Thiruvananthapuram mayor, it would also mark the power of voters who hate politicians who don’t pull their weight and instead throw their weight around.
After the 2020 corporation election in Thiruvananthapuram, the city celebrated when Arya Rajendran became the youngest mayor at the age of 21. Five years later, the party asked Arya not to show her face anywhere during the campaign. Intoxicated by power too young, arrogance had become her middle name, treating virtually everyone – from officers to people – as underlings. In a case of road rage last year, the mayor and her MLA husband Sachin Dev chased and blocked the way of a public transport bus with their car.
This time, voters pulled the plug off her party. When an LDF-backed independent (Firoze Khan) in Kunthipuzha of Palakkad polled just one vote (ostensibly his own), it speaks volumes about public ire. By electing UDF in six of the eight corporations (most of them earlier held by LDF), Kerala’s urban voters have put the Pinarayi Vijayan govt that seeks a re-election next year on notice.
Tamil Nadu’s local body polls may never be as political as they are in Kerala, but it is high time we the voters of the state held our councillors responsive and responsible before we do the same with our MLAs and MPs. And if politicians think becoming a councillor is the first step to higher positions, they should learn to toil their way up by meeting public needs and demands.
Ideologies and political philosophies are good for debates, but when it comes to putting our foot down to clear the garbage on the streets and ensure clean water flows through those pipes, we should question – and punish – our local representatives that shirk responsibility and fatten their pockets. Knowing one’s councillor is a good place to start.
