Did Mumbai pass the voter turnout test? Experts discuss

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Q: Are you disappointed? You set up mumbaivotes.com, put in a lot of effort to compile databases on all the contestants for the Mumbai elections. You actually helped inform people with these red flags and green flags and help us make informed decisions about our candidates. Does it mean like efforts like yours would fail to move people to action?

Vivek Gilani: I am not disappointed on the whole. Yes, the sheer numbers do disappoint you when you look at them just cursorily. But it is quite encouraging that out of how many ever lakhs that did end up voting this time a lot of them went to the voting booth with information, empowered, rather than just going there and throwing a dart in the dark and walking out.

So, qualitatively I am very assured that we moved positively in a direction. I think for India to become an evolved democracy we need to go from just looking at the numbers, but looking at the quality of that participation.

Q: Disappointed by the overall turnout for Mumbai City?

Sanyal: It is slightly lower as I understand but I am still struggling for the numbers of South Mumbai if they are 43% then its considerably higher than what South Mumbai recorded last time which was around 30%, we are not counting for the de-limitation but South Mumbai in itself, this is certainly better than what we had the last time.

Q: So you are confident that your chances are better this time?

Sanyal: I don't know if that is necessarily correlated, or one is correlated with the other. But I certainly think that South Mumbai has responded there was a god turnout in the polling booths that we saw starting early in the morning and that's a good sign.

To view the entire discussion, click on the attached video.