Sunday Snippets
By Venkatesh Raghavan
A couple of weeks ago, when I halted at my local cigarette vendor’s stall, an old-timer from Matunga, a central area of Mumbai, caught up with me to discuss civic issues that were plaguing our locality. Among the concerns he raised were double parking and violation of traffic regulations pertaining to one way access. My friend, locally popular as Baba urged me to take up the issues with our local corporator, Nehal Shah.
I agreed to Baba’s request. I however did tell him that it’s been ages since I covered the civic beat for our city and will have to prepare my homework thoroughly before I seek an audience with Nehal.
As luck would have it, Nehal agreed to an appointment in the evening hours at her local office. The problem I faced was having graduated from a field reporter to a consulting editor for our news portal, I was fairly buffered from ground level interactions. As I waited in her office, calculating how to break the ice, my old memories of covering the Civic Hall for the Free Press Journal flooded me.
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Though I was tabbed as a crime reporter, the civic beat was the most enjoyable one for me. I recalled an instance, when our local corporator, the late Rustom Tirandaz, addressed the civic general body meeting in English. A loud volley of protests from across political parties drowned his voice before he relented and switched to Hindi.
Another instance that struck me was what transpired when covering the standing committee meeting of the civic body. Now the standing committee was meant to address the taking up of new projects as well as Civic infrastructure-related issues.
The standing committee meeting gets chaired by corporators from different political parties and is presided by a senior officer from the civic administration, who acts both as a moderator and spokesperson of the administrative staff.
The corporator from the ruling benches is chosen to be the chairman of the standing committee and acts as an intermediary between the elected corporators and the civic administration.
I recall this incident as it would have turned into a major embarrassment had a timely apology from the then chairman, Digambar Khandarkar, not intervened. One of the lady corporators, in the meeting, used unparliamentary language against the administration while voicing her civic grievance. The civil servant presiding over the meeting immediately made his move to walk out. The chairman rendered an unconditional apology and entreated the officer to continue presiding on the meeting.
As the memories of decades ago kept flooding me, I almost missed out on our corporator Nehal entering her offer. I was however quick to stand up and greet her after being alerted.
My chat with Nehal again took me back to the early years of my journalistic career, covering the civic beat. Nehal was highlighting the efforts she made in the fields of slum redevelopment and also development work on cess buildings falling within our civic constituency.
I then recalled how the then Parliamentarian, late Murli Deora had announced that residents of cess buildings, meaning those belonging to the colonial era, can form their own co-operative society and switch to ownership of their respective flats after paying the landlord 100 months rent.
Nehal brought me back to the present, stating the issue is still unresolved. As we continued the discussion, dwelling on current issues, she averred that given a clear mandate, their efficacy in resolving people’s grievances will be greatly enhanced.
As I concluded the interview with her my mind dwelt on a conversation I had with our late editor, DM Silviera. He had queried me about how the Civic body was responding to people’s complaints about potholes. I explained to him their plans for concretization. My editor quipped you sound well equipped to defend the civic administration. I shot back, I will become their next chief public relations officer.
