Maharashtra elections: Stall owners cash in on pre-election chai pe kharcha

A classic piece of Mumbai pantomime played out this Friday when MNS candidate Avinash Jadhav emerged from his bustling party office in Thane around 2.30pm. Even as he was talking on the phone, Jadhav crinkled his eyes in the direction of shopkeeper Rajesh Rahate and compressed the air with his index finger and thumb. Sure enough, within seconds, a tiny conical white tea cup—brimming with sweet, buffalo milk-based, “non-acidic” Pandharpur-style chai—landed in the MLA’s free hand.

“He (Jadhav) drops in at least five to six times a day,” said a reverential Rahate, whose month-old shop adjacent to the MNS office has not only been making nearly Rs 7,000 instead of the standard daily average of Rs 6,000 the last few days but has also won a VIP ambassador in Jadhav, who often recommends the Rs 10 per glass concoction to others.

As pairs of footwear multiply outside party offices in the run-up to the Vidhan Sabha elections , chai is flowing as generously as charchas. For stall owners in the radius of outposts, this election fizz is making up for the typical lull between Navratri and Diwali. Among those celebrating is the tea seller at Manohar Bhonsle’s 37-year-old vada pao centre near Dadar’s Shiv Sena Bhavan which famously binds cousins and political rivals Uddhav Thackeray and Raj Thackeray in their gastronomical love of the working class snack. “Every time there’s a meeting, business booms,” said Lalji Patel, who runs the tea stall that dispatches around 70 cups a day. “Just yesterday,” he said, “I made 50 per cent more than I make on a regular day.”

Typically, stall owners outside party offices tend to be party workers. Some have the aura of secret keepers while others boast VIP fans. Uddhav Thackeray makes a customary pitstop at Bhonsle’s kiosk for tea and bhajji on the way to a nearby temple and Raj Thackeray prefers to get his usual portion of vada pav packed for himself and his mother, and moong bhajji for his sister. It was Raj who seeded Bhonsle’s vada pav stall in 1982, a time when the Shiv Sena was trying to instil pride in the Marathi manoos through this home-grown burger. “He had spotted my tiny roadside kadai, called for me and handed me Rs 15,000 so that I could set up a proper shop,” recalled Bhonsle, whose backdrop—a poster showing him shaking hands and handing over flowers to the Sena chief—is the result of Bhonsle’s VIP namesake Manohar Joshi introducing the stall owner to Bal Thackeray, the Sena patriarch, many years ago.

If not for some unforeseen formatting that his laptop recently underwent, Neeraj Joshi— one of the many men in yellow running errands in the BJP head office at Nariman Point —too would have shown you similar photos with everyone from Devendra Fadnavis to Yogi Adityanath. With those images now wiped out, all Joshi —who used to prepare chai for BJP politicians having imbibed the art from his grandfather—has are memories. “I even saw Amit Shah when he was the BJP president in 2014,” said Joshi, who recalled fetching Shah a glass of milk with less sugar.

Many major party offices now boast their own coffee machines, pantries and contractual chai suppliers. Besides, many MLA candidates are now outside the city on rallies. While these factors resultin a lean period for some chaiwallas, their proximity to political hotspots continues to pay in covert ways. When the BMC and cops penalise chaiwallas or whisk away their equipment, clout intervenes.

Some chaiwallas, though, are estranged political neighbours. Thane-based Madan has stopped serving tea to the party office near him because “the middlemen never pay us.” Dadar’s Patel, though, senses that his political clients are not as close-fisted anymore. “There’s less dadagiri now,” he said.