Abhijit Joshi

Amid the din of Maharashtra’s politics, the loudest beneficiary may well be the BJP, its quietest player. Maharashtra’s politics has rarely been short of drama. Yet the current season feels particularly cacophonous. As leaders dart between Delhi and Mumbai and television studios throb with indignation, each day yields a fresh provocation.  And yet, for all the noise, there is a curious absence of weight. Beneath the surface tumult, there is little sign of a sustained ideological contest or a...

In the State that once prized stable alliances, power now changes hands faster than loyalties can be explained. Maharashtra was once celebrated for its political geometry. Alliances were durable and the rivalries intelligible while ideological battle-lines, though often blurred, were nonetheless broadly recognisable. Since 2019, that architecture has collapsed. What has replaced it is not a new order but a condition of permanent uncertainty. The state’s politics today mutates continuously,...

The BJP’s sweep of Maharashtra’s local bodies suggests that power is no longer flowing only from Mumbai, but rising quietly from the countryside. Maharashtra’s recent Zilla Parishad and Panchayat Samiti elections, usually treated as political sideshows, deserve a closer look. They may yet prove more revealing than last year’s Assembly contest. For while state elections measure momentum, local-body polls test something more durable: whether a party’s claims of grassroots strength can survive...