Could FDA crusader Tukaram Mundhe clean up the Election Commission of India?

The question of ‘after Gyanesh Kumar who?’ needs an out-of-the-box solution. I propose we swap our chief election commissioner with the wildly popular and trending commissioner of the Food & Drug Administration, Maharashtra—Mr Tukaram Mundhe. You can’t get more out-of-the-box than that! Change is always to be welcomed, and Mundhe will be the icing on the cake of change.

Big role

You know that all this fuss began with electoral rolls. They are still figuring out how to make it right. That’s such a pity because our FDA commissioner is the resident expert in dealing with rolls. He has handled chicken rolls, spring rolls, cabbage rolls, bread rolls… what’s a trifling electoral roll! Piece of cake!

Furious at spurious

Mundhe knows all the FDA rules by heart, including every clause and sub-clause. The rules warn us of the dangers of mislabelling. It’s plain for all to see that Gen Z has been blatantly mislabelled. Pot-bellied, balding men and middle-aged matrons fancy themselves as Gen Z. Such mislabelling is familiar territory for Mundhe because he can tell feat from counterfeit. If he can call out analogue paneer (paneer that has never seen the inside of a dairy) at some of the biggest establishments in Mumbai, he can easily tell real Gen Z from the fake. Once he puts the fear of God into the hearts of wrongdoers, they will come out singing ‘Never, never on a Mundhe’.

Cometh the hour, cometh the cockroach

Government leaders who have stood up spectacularly to lions and cheetahs are now running scared at the sight of a little roach. It’s probably a bit of katsaridaphobia. But Mundhe has none of this pathological fear. We have all read accounts of how he and his team have raided the storerooms of marquee clubs and restaurants in Mumbai. In those spaces, dark and damp, he has done a cockroach census. He counted three in the canteen of the very court which was hearing his case. If Delhi has a problem with cockroaches, Mundhe is the man with the flit gun.

‘Best before’ date

Mundhe has gone into pantries and pulled down entire shelves of butter, cream and other goodies. Why? They were all past their expiry dates. So, the bin is where they belong—not our bodies. People need to realise that even ideologies and individuals, netas and notions have ‘best before’ dates. What clicked two decades ago may no longer work as well now. There are many in Delhi currently hovering close to their ‘buy before’ date. They don’t know it, and their hangers-on are not man enough to point to the calendar. It will take our FDA crusader to signal that it is time to go.

Surrogate advertising beats surrogate voting

There’s never a dal moment when Mundhe gets into action. Recently, he entered the gilded gates of Bollywood. Three of our top film stars have for years been promoting a banned substance while ostensibly appearing to advertise a harmless mouth freshener. Well, you can fool some of the people some of the time but you can’t fool Mundhe even one time. He called all three stars for an explanation. That’s exactly what he is going to do with the Election Commission—give them something to chew about.

Turning the tables

Right now, there’s a lot happening in Delhi’s Jantar Funtar. But if Mundhe extricates us from the soup of our own making, he will have more than done his job. He will give 1.4 billion people the best meal they’ve ever had. It’s party time, folks.