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By:

Rajendra Pandharpure

15 April 2025 at 7:55:54 pm

The BJP’s Ganesha Gambit

Pune’s Ganeshotsav has become an enormous civic and political stage, and the ruling party has proved adept at occupying it. Pune: The city’s Ganeshotsav is entering its final phase, but the festival has already demonstrated something beyond its extraordinary crowds and familiar spectacle: the extent to which it has become a political stage. This year, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has left a particularly visible imprint on the festivities, using an event that reaches deep into the city’s...

The BJP’s Ganesha Gambit

Pune’s Ganeshotsav has become an enormous civic and political stage, and the ruling party has proved adept at occupying it. Pune: The city’s Ganeshotsav is entering its final phase, but the festival has already demonstrated something beyond its extraordinary crowds and familiar spectacle: the extent to which it has become a political stage. This year, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has left a particularly visible imprint on the festivities, using an event that reaches deep into the city’s neighbourhoods as an opportunity for public outreach. The political appropriation of the festival has not, however, been without a counter-current. Demands were raised for curbs on noise pollution, loudspeakers and the volume of dhol-tasha performances. The argument was not against Ganeshotsav itself, but for moderation - notably, a complete ban on DJ music and limits on the number of dhol and tasha instruments used by performing troupes. Familiar Troubles The festival’s reality has been rather different. Major roads have been occupied by mandaps. Processions celebrating the arrival of Lord Ganesha have unfolded amid punishing noise. DJ music, while subject to restrictions, has continued. Traffic congestion has become a familiar feature of the festival, with the movement of political leaders adding another layer to the city’s already strained roads. The Peth areas have remained crowded deep into the night. The Shrimant Dagdusheth Halwai Ganpati temple has drawn enormous crowds for darshan from the opening day. From the old city to housing societies and neighbourhood mandals, Ganeshotsav touches virtually every part of Pune. For a political party seeking a direct connection with citizens, few occasions offer such a ready-made network of people, institutions and local influencers. The BJP enters this festival with an unusually formidable organisational base. It has two MPs, seven MLAs and more than 100 corporators in Pune. Murlidhar Mohol, one of the city’s MPs, is a Union Minister of State. Chandrakant Patil is a Cabinet minister in the Maharashtra government, while Madhuri Misal is a Minister of State. The party’s presence also extends into the festival’s organisational architecture. Its influence is visible across numerous mandals, large and small. BJP MLA Hemant Rasane is General Secretary of the Shrimant Dagdusheth Halwai Sarvajanik Ganpati Trust. Kunal Tilak, a member of Lokmanya Tilak’s family, is a BJP corporator. The political and cultural histories of Pune therefore intersect in ways that are difficult to ignore. The BJP’s senior leadership has also made the most of the occasion. National President Nitin Nabin visited Pune to seek Lord Ganesha’s blessings, while Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis visited the city before and during the festival. Such visits are about more than religious observance. In a festival watched by millions and embedded in the city’s social life, political visibility comes almost automatically. There is also talk in Pune that the BJP provided substantial financial support to Dhol-Lezim troupes and their organisers, with claims that some major mandals received financial backing as well. These claims would require independent verification, but the perception itself points to the depth of the political contest around Ganeshotsav. BJP workers, according to local observers, have also sought to make their presence more conspicuous than that of festivities organised by housing societies. Useful Expedient The festival arrives at a politically useful moment for the BJP. The party has faced disquiet on several fronts. Young people have been agitated over the paper-leak controversy. Broader public dissatisfaction has been voiced over inflation and unemployment, while government policies relating to ethanol and charges associated with UPI transactions have also generated criticism. While a political party can defend a policy in a press conference and advertise its achievements, during Ganeshotsav, its workers can be physically present in neighbourhoods, among processions, mandals, cultural groups and devotees. Politics thus becomes less about argument and more about visibility. That is the BJP’s advantage in Pune. Ganeshotsav, after all, is not simply a sequence of religious rituals. It is an elaborate civic network involving local organisers, volunteers, cultural groups, businesses, residents and political representatives. Whoever has influence over that network acquires a powerful channel of communication with the city. The BJP appears to understand this particularly well. Its strength in Pune’s electoral politics has been reinforced by a presence that extends beyond elections and into the institutions and social spaces that organise public life. The irony is that the very scale of the festival that makes it politically attractive also magnifies the civic costs. The political value of Ganeshotsav and the civic burden it creates are therefore two sides of the same phenomenon. For Pune, the larger question is not whether politics has entered Ganeshotsav. It has done so for decades. The more consequential question is whether the festival’s extraordinary social capital will remain primarily a vehicle for political outreach or whether the same influence can be used to reconcile celebration with the ordinary civic needs of the city. For the moment, the BJP seems to have understood the first proposition better than most.

A Fiscal Stress Test before FY26

Writer: Amey Chitale
Amey Chitale
Jan 28
4 min read

India’s budget arithmetic now depends more on taxpayers, dividends and discipline than windfalls.

In 2025 India crossed a subtle but important threshold. The year marked not merely a continuation of post-pandemic recovery but a transition towards structural realignment. Domestic demand remained resilient even as global trade tensions, tariff barriers and slowing external growth clouded the horizon. What stood out was not immunity from shocks but adaptability.


With real GDP expanding by 8.2 percent in the second quarter of FY2025–26, the economy gave policymakers room to pursue fiscal consolidation without choking growth. As the Union Budget for FY26 approaches, the state of the Centre’s finances offers a revealing snapshot of India’s evolving economic model.


Complex Story

Tax collections, however, tell a more complicated story. In the first three quarters of FY26, direct taxes failed to keep pace with nominal GDP growth. By December 17 last year, net collections stood at Rs 17.04 trillion, an increase of 8 percent year on year but far below the budgeted growth target of 16.1 percent. Mid-November data showed growth slipping closer to 7 percent. Gross collections rose by a modest 4.16 percent to Rs 20.01 trillion. Slowing refunds preserved liquidity and helped the government meet interim deficit targets, though it masked underlying weakness in revenue momentum.


Beneath these aggregates lies a deeper structural shift. For the first time in decades, personal income tax (PIT) overtook corporate tax (CT) as the primary driver of buoyancy. India’s tax-to-GDP ratio, long tethered to corporate profitability, is increasingly anchored in individual incomes. In 2025 corporate tax collections amounted to Rs 8.17 trillion, while PIT touched Rs 8.47 trillion. This is no anomaly. Since 2000–01, PIT has grown at an average annual rate of 16 percent, slightly faster than the 15 percent pace of corporate taxes.


The composition of corporate tax revenues exposes a growing fragility. Just 0.1 percent of companies (around 743 firms with profits exceeding Rs. 500 crore) accounted for over 53 percent of CT collections in 2025. Such head-heavy dependence leaves the exchequer vulnerable to profit cycles among a handful of conglomerates. Personal income tax, by contrast, rests on a broader and more stable base. Although only about 6 percent of Indians pay income tax, their collective contribution offers greater resilience over time.


Policy choices accelerated this transition. In a calculated trade-off, the government raised the zero-tax threshold to Rs. 12 lakh, sacrificing roughly Rs 1 trillion in FY26 revenues to stimulate consumption. By late 2025 nearly 72 percent of taxpayers had migrated to the simplified new regime. The result was a clear boost to demand: private consumption rose 7.9 percent in the second quarter. Not all tax heads benefited. Securities transaction tax, projected to grow 41 percent, faltered as segments of the capital market cooled in the second and third quarters.


Indirect taxes underwent their most dramatic overhaul since the launch of the goods and services tax in 2017. September 2025 saw the introduction of ‘GST 2.0’ which replaced the labyrinthine multi-slab structure with a simpler two-tier system of 5 percent and 18 percent. The reform aimed to reduce compliance costs, curb inflation and offset global trade pressures through fiscal stimulus.


Initial data offered mixed signals. GST collections peaked in April at a record Rs 2.36 trillion gross (Rs 2.10 trillion net), buoyed by seasonal demand and lingering inflation. Thereafter monthly collections settled into a range of Rs 1.70–1.95 trillion as price pressures eased and consumption normalised. November’s gross GST take of Rs 1.70 trillion provided the first clear glimpse of GST 2.0 in action. Domestic GST fell 2.3 percent, while import GST rose by over 10 percent. The divergence suggests that while demand for industrial inputs and capital goods remains robust, household consumption is cooling.


Shock Absorbers

As tax revenues strained, non-tax receipts became the fiscal system’s shock absorbers. By November they had reached Rs 5.16 trillion, or 88.6 percent of the annual target, far ahead of last year’s pace. The linchpin was the Reserve Bank of India’s record dividend of Rs 2.69 trillion. Public-sector banks added Rs 34,990 crore, lifting the Centre’s share to Rs 22,699 crore. By late 2025 total dividends had climbed to Rs 3.39 trillion, exceeding the budgeted Rs 3.25 trillion. These windfalls enabled aggressive capital spending without breaching deficit targets. Yet critics warn of a ‘dividend trap’ - reliance on episodic transfers may delay tougher reforms to strengthen recurring revenues, a concern long echoed by the IMF.


Disinvestment, once pitched as a pillar of structural reform, remained anaemic. Targets were repeatedly trimmed to match reality. A shift towards value optimisation over outright sales has slowed execution, leaving privatisation more promise than practice.


On the spending side, the government’s priorities were unmistakable. Total expenditure for FY26 was set at Rs 50.65 trillion, a rise of 7.4 percent. Capital expenditure stood at the heart of the growth strategy, with an allocation of Rs 11.11 trillion, equivalent to 3.1–3.4 percent of GDP. By the first half of FY26, utilisation had reached 51.8 percent, sharply higher than a year earlier, driven by infrastructure projects under the National Infrastructure Pipeline. Revenue spending, by contrast, was tightly leashed, rising just 0.03 percent between April and October. Subsidies amounted to Rs 2.88 trillion, with food subsidies declining even as fertiliser and petroleum costs rose between 14 and 41 percent amid global volatility. Interest payments remained the heaviest burden, absorbing 25 percent of total spending and 37 percent of revenue receipts.


All this fed into the central question of the year: the fiscal deficit. The government aims to reduce it to 4.4 percent of GDP in FY26, from 4.8 percent in FY25. By November the deficit had already reached Rs 9.76 trillion, or 62.3 percent of the budget estimate, compared with 52.5 percent at the same point last year.


Looking ahead, the FY26 budget will test the government’s balancing act. Spending may have to slow in the second half to meet deficit goals, potentially tempering growth. Deregulation will deepen, with stable income tax rates and a more attractive new regime. Targeted support for MSMEs and tariff adjustments aligned with free-trade agreements are likely as the impact of steep US tariffs unfolds.


India still leads the global growth table. The challenge for policymakers is to turn a year of fiscal improvisation into a durable framework that balances ambition with restraint.

 

(The author is a Chartered Accountant with a leading company in Mumbai. Views personal.)


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