Mumbainama: Mr Owaisi, do not communalise Mumbai’s urban development​ issues

The leader of the Hyderabad-based All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM or MIM) declared at a rally that Muslim-dominated areas of Mumbai must get 21% of the BMC’s Rs37,000 crore annual budget, that’s Rs 7,700 crore, because it matches the proportion of Muslims in the city’s population...

The forthcoming election to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) ought to have been about the poor state of civic services in Mumbai and a road map for the city’s future. Instead, the two major allies in power, Shiv Sena and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), are locked in battles over jingoistic nationalist sentiment, grabbing credit for projects and personal egos of their respective leaders.

All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen chief Asaduddin Owaisi (File photo)

Into this raucous scenario, Asaduddin Owaisi introduced a heavy dose of religious partisanship this week. The leader of the Hyderabad-based All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM or MIM) declared at a rally that Muslim-dominated areas of Mumbai must get 21% of the BMC’s Rs37,000 crore annual budget, that’s Rs 7,700 crore, because it matches the proportion of Muslims in the city’s population.

Owaisi’s demand has been roundly condemned, including by Muslim leaders. Samajwadi Party (SP) representatives, who won from Muslim-dominated areas earlier termed Owaisi’s demand dangerous and communal. It’s outspoken leader Rais Shaikh derided that the demand for a separate share for Muslims in the BMC budget would hurt the cause of the community and help the Sena-BJP alliance by polarising voters. The SP and MIM are rivals, of course.

That said, Owaisi is fishing in dangerous waters. He probably plans to leverage the MIM’s recent successes in local elections in Nanded, Aurangabad and Kalyan-Dombivli, and the election of two MIM MLAs in the October 2014 state Assembly election including Waris Pathan, who won from Byculla albeit by a wafer-thin margin, to win a few seats in the BMC. The increased visibility and voice will boost the party’s chances in the general and state elections of 2019.

It is no secret that Owaisi’s electoral approach across India has been divisive and communal. He is unlikely to play another card in Mumbai. Of course, this is cynical and opportunistic but his aim is to be the sole or leading representative of Mumbai’s Muslims, or at least a sizeable section of them. However, in the process, he is communalising the urban development debate and the basics of budget allocation. It is a perilous approach, one that is likely to hurt the cause of the poorest of the poor which includes Muslims.

Owaisi should have read the fundamentals more closely. Of the Rs37,000 crore budget, the BMC spends nearly half on running its establishment and another 20% on different funds. This leaves about 30% or just about Rs 12,900 crore for development work. The allocation of this amount does not factor in the dominance of a religion in an area or BMC ward — rightly so. Besides, all 227 corporators are free to submit and push for development projects in their wards. Owaisi can be countered factually by listing projects in Muslim-dominated areas and number of children in BMC’s Urdu-medium schools. That is the short point.

The larger issue is that the BMC and the state government have neither lavished as much attention nor provided adequate services in the poorer areas of Mumbai as they do elsewhere. The demand to raise the quality of civic services in the neglected areas, a few of which may have a dominance of Muslims, would have been a legitimate one. But Owaisi does not speak for all marginalised or poor, only for the marginalised Muslim. What a pity, indeed, that Mumbai’s development debate has been given blatantly communal overtones.