India, Jan. 15 -- After nine years (nearly four of them without elected corporators), Mumbai votes today to elect its corporators in the country's richest civic body. The 2026 elections were expected to bring to the fore long-pending civic issues and invite scrutiny of political parties and candidates on their ability to govern a complex, issue-laden metropolis like Mumbai. Instead, ground reports, interviews with candidates and ward-level observations across the city suggest a different reality.

Conversations on the ground across slums, middle-class neighbourhoods and gated societies have increasingly centred on one factor - money and favours. The role of money in municipal elections is not new. What these elections have revealed, howev...