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Attacks Prompt Some of India’s Urban Elite to Plunge Into Politics
MUMBAI, India — Having written off politics as a crass and irrelevant ritual for at least a generation, India’s urban elite is beginning to reconsider its role.
Meera Hiranandani Sanyal, a banker, said the death of a colleague in the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last November prompted her to take a quixotic plunge into politics. Shocked by the government’s failure to halt the siege for three days, Ms. Sanyal decided to run for a seat in India’s 543-member Parliament.
In Bangalore, an entrepreneur who introduced budget airlines to India, G. R. Gopinath, said he was prompted to run as an independent by his state’s failure to stop a mob attack on women drinking at a bar early this year.
In Hyderabad, the prosperous tech city, a new party called Loksatta has cast itself as the voice of urban, middle-class India. Loksatta, or People’s Power, is fielding more than a dozen candidates in the parliamentary elections, which begin Thursday and go on for five weeks around India.
The assertiveness of the urban elite is new in a country where the village still dominates the political imagination. In India, unlike in the United States, voter participation rates in wealthy city neighborhoods tend to be lower than the national average. Two out of three Indians still live in the countryside, where turnout is consistently higher.
Redistricting this year has given Indian cities greater representation in Parliament, and champions of the handful of new entrants say the outcome of many races will depend on a small number of votes. Still, the impact of the new candidates will be known only when results are declared in mid-May.
The candidates and like-minded citizen groups have started a lively debate about a variety of issues, including the prevalence of caste, the lack of transparent campaign financing and the rising number of criminals in politics. A tally by National Election Watch, a civic group, has found that one in five members of Parliament have criminal charges pending against them or have been convicted of a crime.
Groups like Bangalore-based Jaagore, or Wake Up, have been helping first-time voters to register. Here in Mumbai, a gay and lesbian group, Queer Azaadi Mumbai, has canvassed major parties on where they stand on gay issues, a once-unthinkable effort in a country where homosexual acts remain illegal. And Facebook, the social networking Web site, has become a campaign tool in a country where traditional politicians still go door to door to ask for votes.
Skeptics of the candidates say that while they may bring a handful of middle-class voters back to the polling booths, independents like Ms. Sanyal and Mr. Gopinath have little or no chance without political experience and party backing. (Some of the new entrants are running with the mainstream political parties.) Others complain that the independents, no matter how sincere, will draw votes away from experienced politicians with good track records.
“It’s a little foolhardy,” said Sidharth Bhatia, the editorial page editor of The Daily News and Analysis, a Mumbai newspaper. “They’re not going to win votes on Facebook.”
Several of the new candidates are critical of their own indifference to politics. Mr. Gopinath, 57, recounted his own feelings as he watched television images of the young women at a bar being assaulted by a mob in Mangalore, in his own Karnataka State, in January. “I said, ‘Can we afford the privilege of being indifferent?’ ” he remembered thinking. “The cocoon we have been inside is very fragile.”
In the outsourcing hub of Gurgaon one recent morning, a tech professional named Gaurav Mehta, 28, visited the cafeteria of a call center, rounding up an audience for his PowerPoint presentation. He walked them through the voter registration process and pointed them to the Web site of Jaagore, for which he volunteers, to learn about candidates.
Two men continued to play pool, uninterested in his pitch. One asked if he had to go to an election office to register; the answer was yes. Another said: “You’re telling me to vote, but for whom? I am 40. I’ve never voted once.”
Mr. Mehta’s message to his peers was simple: “Why are you cribbing? You’re letting other people choose that kook.”
The November terrorist attacks, which focused on upscale hotels, underscored the fact that even those Indians who live in gated enclaves, drive in air-conditioned cars and can afford their own health care, need the government to keep them safe. The attacks, which began on the evening of Nov. 26, and are known here as 26/11, unleashed anger against the political class. A civic group called Agni has registered 11,000 new voters on college campuses since the attacks.
“My trigger, what tipped me, was 26/11,” said Ms. Sanyal, 47, the head of India operations for the multinational ABN-Amro. “No one was in charge, and it was a complete shock.”
Ms. Sanyal is competing for a seat against the incumbent with the governing Indian National Congress Party, as well as a candidate from the radical Hindu party Shiv Sena.
On a recent Sunday morning, Ms. Sanyal, wearing a blue shalwar kameez and running shoes, approached morning walkers at Priyadarshini Park, in the heart of her own wealthy Malabar Hill neighborhood. She pressed her campaign agenda: a directly elected mayor for Mumbai, greater government investment for infrastructure, police reform and better coastal defense. She urged them to go out and vote, and to encourage their drivers and maids, too.
“We will certainly vote, but how much is our percentage?” an elderly man said ruefully. Several others applauded her for her courage.
Sunil Vaswani, 50, an executive with a global logistics company, was suspicious of why Mumbai’s polling day, April 30, had been scheduled before a long weekend. “Is it intentionally done to keep out educated voters?” he wanted to know.
Ms. Sanyal suggested that they go to the polls as soon as they opened on the morning of April 30, and then drive out of town for their weekend.
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