Over the last five years, Mumbai has been in the news more for all the wrong reasons than the right ones. The two horrific terror attacks — one on the city’s lifeline commuter trains in 2006 and the other on the heart of the financial capital last year — the violent campaign against north Indians unleashed by Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, the deluge of 2005 that drowned the sprawling suburbs, and the constantly creaking or deteriorating infrastructure have given Maharashtra’s capital the image of being under siege from within and without. The one bright spot amid this picture of gloom, the magnificent Bandra-Worli Sea Link, is as much a symbol of the chronic delays and inefficiencies that have come to plague ambitious projects planned for the city as it is an engineering and architectural marvel.

But when Mumbaikars go to vote with the rest of the state on October 13, a largely different set of political considerations are expected to be at play and influence the outcome of the polls in the city, and the larger Mumbai Metropolitan Region which, after delimitation, will contribute 60 MLAs to an assembly of 288 members. Of the 60, Mumbai accounts for 36 seats while neighbouring Thane has 24, up from 34 and 13, respectively in 2004.

The increase and the changed contours of constituencies are in themselves indicators of how the megapolis has grown north and taken political power with it while the island city has remained a vestige of the elite with equally selective concerns.

... contd.