Battle for a mindset

In Mumbai, the area I live in has been called the 'business headquarters of India'. Known in electoral terms as the South Mumbai Lok Sabha Constituency, its span includes the Stock Exchange, the headquarters of the Reserve Bank of India, and Nariman Point and Flora Fountain - the head offices of some of the country's leading business houses and banks.

More significantly, it's where captains of industry choose to live. Cyrus Mistry and his father, Pallonji, Ratan Tata, Kumar Mangalam Birla, Mukesh and Anil Ambani, Adi Godrej and Uday Kotak, all live within spitting distance of each others and, of course, this results in many piquant situations where arch business rivals can be spotted at the same restaurants, parties and clubs!

They send their kids to the same schools, visit the same art galleries and yes, their wives buy vegetables from the same vendors!

I recall some time ago, looking at the crowd around me at a jazz concert at the area's open air Rang Bhavan and thinking, this is the last bastion of cosmopolitan, inclusive, free, liberal, urban and progressive values. Because of historical and cultural reasons, South Mumbai is more than just an area or an electoral constituency. It is a mindset, a way of life, an aggregate of the finest values that need to be protected.

South Mumbai is home to one of India's only art districts with its nerve centre, the Jahangir Art Gallery, the incubator of the progressive art movement in India. Here, new wave directors have written their screenplays, poets and journalists have sat discussing their newest projects and the area's young students have held hands and exchanged notes and sweet nothings.

South Mumbai's cinemas have screened avantgarde films, its nightclubs have witnessed international rock and Blues artists and its two hotels - the Oberoi and the Taj - preside grandly over the city's celebrated occasions like two divas overlooking Western shores.

In South Mumbai, the beatnik artist, the white collar worker, the student of commerce, the Goan piano teacher, the Muslim shopkeeper, the Parsi dog lover and the Hindu home-maker, all find meaning and livelihood.

The elections of this constituency next week will see the incumbent, Congress's Milind Deora, pitted against the Shiv Sena's Arvind Sawant, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena's Bala Nandgaonkar, Aam Aadmi Party's Meera Sanyal and Communist Party of India's Prakash Reddy.

And though it's slated to be a fight among five candidates, just in terms of scale and heft, the battle is really between the first three persons, which is why it is even more significant.

Deora, the minister of state for information technology and communications and shipping, is very much a child of his environment. Hailing from a business family, the son of a bridge-playing mother, he is an alumni of the Cathedral School, a rock musician and a staunch defender of all the values that denizen's of South Mumbai hold so dear. Nandgaonkar, his challenger, has 72 court cases pending against him, some of which include criminal conspiracy, rioting and assault, and his role in the recent toll booth violence is well documented.

Arvind Sawant draws his strength from his activities in the Shiv Sena trade unions, unions that have a well-earned reputation of harassing the business community, holding businessmen at ransom at will, organising strikes and bandhs and unfettered, self-righteous moral policing.

Who will I vote for next week? For me, personally, it is a battle between a mindset and value systems.

Which is why, regardless of my views for which party wins at the centre, Deora is my choice for this constituency, because in him I see the values that embody the soul and character of the place I grew up in, values that need protecting.

Malavika Sangghvi is a Mumbai-based writer malavikasangghvi@hotmail.com