Articles by Avinay Umesh-Sanyogita

On 17 June 2021, landslides in Chembur and Vikhroli killed more than 30 people, injured many others and destroyed several houses. Hanslal lost his entire family in the Vikhroli landslide. He lived in a one-room house, paying Rs 3,000 as monthly rent - a price he could thankfully afford in the absence of work and social security during the pandemic. He worked as a carpenter and was out of work in the past few months. Hanslal is aware that both the Union and the State Governments have announced compensation, but he is not hopeful of receiving the money because he…

In the past few years, our elected representatives - right from MPs to our corporators - have made half-hearted promises to release a report card of sorts of their performance in office.  On 26th July 2019, Mumbai North MP Gopal Shetty raised the following question in the house: whether the Government proposes to amend the Representation of the People Act to make it compulsory for political parties winning general and assembly elections to bring details regarding fulfilment of promises made by them in their manifestoes in public forum in the third year and making recognition of political parties contingent upon…

At Mumbai Votes, we spent the last year tracking and assessing the performance of MPs against the promises they made before election and during the first year (2019-20), of their five year term.  All of the six MPs made promises to expedite long pending redevelopment & rehabilitation of slums and old buildings. In a city with more than half its population living in slums, and several collapses of old buildings, it is reasonable to expect elected representatives to prioritise the issue of safe, affordable and dignified housing for all.  In this piece, I will assess their efforts to fulfil their…