The hectic end of the year is also a time for stock-taking; it leaves everybody a tad breathless. Just as it has the city’s Mayor Soumini Jain. As the newly appointed city keeper she finds herself landing at a crossroad of projects completed, hanging fire and works in progress. On a personal front too she is stretched thin between family and a gush of work that accompanies her new role. Since she took over, in mid-November, 2015, her phone has not stopped ringing, she attending to every caller personally. “That’s my nature; the only thing I can put off is my lunch,” she says adding that it cannot go on this way. Her New Year resolution for 2016 is to make, and strictly adhere to, a time table that will clearly give her time for work, family and herself. The city’s needs have to be attended to just as much as her family and herself, she believes. So the New Year will have the Mayor negotiate a practical work-life balance.
A lover of the arts, she could watch only one film in the theatres, Amar Akbar Anthony , in 2015, which she enjoyed because it caught the Fort Kochi lingo aptly. Prior to her current position, as chairperson of Works Standing Committee, she found little time to indulge in her hobbies of painting and music. “I like listening to songs, I love to paint but these are things I have not attended to for a long time,” she says.
When she was 18 and studying at SH College Thevara, Soumini met her husband and married him, much against family wishes. She was young and a Hindu, he was a Christian and older. But both stood their ground, got married and began life together. It was only after her first born, a daughter, Padmini, that her family accepted the couple and since then it has been a happy story of joint living and running home. She has been a busy homemaker since and enjoys cooking for the family. “I love to cook. I can clean fish and make all the curries. I am basically a wife and a mother,” she says.
The Mayor’s post has not altered any of that, even though it came quite “unexpectedly”, throwing her into a whirlpool of activities. But she has taken the challenges head on. “With great power comes great responsibility,” she says, quoting Spiderman from the film. “That is the truth.”
Her plans for the city in 2016 are not to launch any new, big ticket projects but keep to the schedule of the ongoing programmes and projects. “Administration is a continuous process and I would like to continue what we had started in the last council. There are so many ongoing important and good projects in various stages of implementation and I would like to see them through.” Maintenance of roads is high on the agenda, “the NH type roads that have a five-year guarantee” and supportive street lighting. The delayed planned and approved building projects, which require council permits, will be taken forward. The year could see a fulfilment of one of her hopes for the city to be selected as Smart City under the Central Government’s Smart City project. Even if that’s not so the city is in the pool of 98 chosen cities already and this will see the development of parts of Fort Kochi, Mattancherry, a part of Central Cochin and the linking water body. The realisation of the waste to energy plant at Brahamapuram will help the city address its waste management problems. “This will be a major step,” she says with optimism. A city that ensures women’s safety is of prime importance to her. A dire need for public toilets will be taken up just as building of two hostels exclusively for women, one at North Station end and another at Pachalam, will be commissioned. Security of women will be addressed by discussions with women’s organisations and NGOs. The drinking water scarcity should be solved in the coming year with a couple of related projects getting completed.
“The major thing in a city’s development is delivering basic amenities. This is expected of any government and I am going to do that,” she says
To her, Kochi, the city where she grew up and found love, affection, power and position, is the most beautiful city. “The people of Kochi should be aware of its goodness and natural beauty and should be a part of making it,” she says. With her at the helm the city can look forward to the contentment that comes with the fulfilment of basic amenities.
