The Maharashtra assembly election will set both tone and tune of the political orchestra currently being conducted by Dr Manmohan Singh and arranger Sonia Gandhi.

This is not to underrate the importance of the two other elections to be held on October 13, in Arunachal Pradesh and Haryana. But Maharashtra has special significance in the musical mosaic: Mumbai is still the corporate, cosmopolitan and even cultural capital of India. Business and Bollywood, cricket and fashion, Slumdog Millionaires and Shanghai, Marathi manoos and bhaiyyas, media and mafia all coexist in this chaotic metropolis.

Mumbai has 36 assembly constituencies out of a total of 288. But Mumbai influences the voting pattern in adjoining Thane, which is a sort of suburban extension incorporating New Mumbai. Thane has 24 constituencies. Together, they have 60. But the character of these 60 seats is qualitatively and even quantitatively different from the rest of Maharashtra. About two crore people — nearly one-fourth of the state’s population — share the Maximum City. Every single region of the state, every state in the country, each linguistic community, all castes and religions, gender and age group are represented in these 60 constituencies as nowhere else in India. Therefore, not only Maharashtra, but Mumbai and Thane will reflect, without exaggeration, the national sentiment following the Lok Sabha election.

Mumbai gets into the national media only when the Khans (Shah Rukh, Salman or Aamir) storm movie and TV screens or when the Thackeray brothers inflame the city’s streets. Yet, notwithstanding the Thackerays, the city has still retained its DNA of liberal pluralism. This is mainly because of its demographic configuration — but also because of the work-culture that shapes life in Mumbai and Thane.

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