All municipalities build drains and sewers. Many run crematoria, hospitals and primary schools too. But, globally, nowhere does a civic corporation also operate an intricate electricity supply system with 8,20,000 consumers, a fleet of 3,400 buses carrying 45 lakh passengers every day, Asia’s largest urban water supply network, colleges where the country’s best medical students aspire to study, a clutch of museums — there’s even a sex museum — and theme gardens, markets and heritage tours.

So, when Mumbai’s 83 lakh voters cast their vote at the February 1 elections to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), they’ll be deciding how the city with global dreams — poised at the brink of a critical makeover — will run in the future, what roads the investor from New York will drive his Toyota on, how much water supply will reach the international convention centre at Bandra Kurla Complex, how the tourist routes will liven up, whether Nariman Point’s influential will pay more property tax.

Projects worth Rs 3,000 crore have been submitted under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission by the BMC alone, apart from the Rs 1,800-crore Brihanmumbai Storm Water Drainage Project. Also, following the 944-mm deluge of July 2005, there’s a sense that the coming couple of years are crucial — Mumbai can do a Shanghai or crumble completely under its own weight.

But across party lines, all agree it’s Mumbai’s kingsize budget that makes the BMC election so vital. “The largest civic budget in India,” says Congress MP Milind Deora, readying campaign schedules for elections to 10 municipalities across Maharashtra on February 1. “So economically, that’s a huge reason.” BJP city unit leader Shaina NC agrees: “No other election is as important,” she says. “Look at its budget, it’s more than several states’ annual budgets.”

... contd.