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By:

Rajendra Joshi

3 December 2024 at 9:20:26 am

Rajesh Kshirsagar walks into a political trap

The Shiv Sena MLA has chosen confrontation over the Shaktipeeth Expressway risking political isolation Kolhapur: Shiv Sena MLA Rajesh Kshirsagar’s aggressive support to the proposed Shaktipeeth Expressway has brought him face-to-face with former MP Raju Shetti. But the political fallout has not stopped there. In quick succession, he has taken on Congress leader Satej Patil, questioned the position of fellow Mahayuti legislator Chandradip Narake and criticised his own party colleague, Public...

Rajesh Kshirsagar walks into a political trap

The Shiv Sena MLA has chosen confrontation over the Shaktipeeth Expressway risking political isolation Kolhapur: Shiv Sena MLA Rajesh Kshirsagar’s aggressive support to the proposed Shaktipeeth Expressway has brought him face-to-face with former MP Raju Shetti. But the political fallout has not stopped there. In quick succession, he has taken on Congress leader Satej Patil, questioned the position of fellow Mahayuti legislator Chandradip Narake and criticised his own party colleague, Public Health Minister and Kolhapur Guardian Minister Prakash Abitkar. That is a lot of political fronts for one MLA to manage simultaneously. The immediate question, therefore, is not whether Kshirsagar has the courage to fight. He clearly does. The more important question is whether he has calculated the political cost of fighting everyone at once. The Shaktipeeth Expressway has become one of the most contentious political issues in Kolhapur district. Raju Shetti has turned the proposed acquisition of agricultural land into a farmers’ rights issue and has built a sustained campaign around it. His politics has always thrived on confrontation. His rise from the sugarcane farmers’ movement to the Assembly and then the Lok Sabha was built on his ability to convert farmers’ grievances into political mobilisation. Kshirsagar has now chosen to meet that politics head-on. His controversial warning against Shetti, in response to the latter’s aggressive rhetoric on land acquisition, transformed a policy disagreement into a personal political duel. Supporters of both sides have since taken the confrontation to the streets. This is precisely where political calculation becomes important. Supporting a flagship project backed by the Chief Minister can certainly send a message to the leadership in Mumbai. Kshirsagar is willing to stand by the government when the going gets difficult. But the same position can create political liabilities at home, particularly when the project affects constituencies where local MLAs are under pressure from farmers. Different Question Kshirsagar’s decision to attack Satej Patil raises a different question. Patil remains one of the most influential political figures in Kolhapur. Suggesting that he may struggle to win the next Assembly election is not routine political criticism. It is an open challenge. That challenge may energise Kshirsagar’s supporters. It may also consolidate his position among those within the ruling establishment who see Patil as a principal political adversary. But there is a danger in confusing political visibility with political strength. Every additional opponent creates another front that has to be managed during an election. And Kshirsagar has already opened several. The most politically revealing part of Kshirsagar’s criticism of Chandradip Narake and Prakash Abitkar. Narake represents a constituency through which the Shaktipeeth project passes. His opposition, therefore, has an obvious electoral logic: he has to respond to the concerns of his voters. Kshirsagar’s criticism of Narake puts him in a difficult position. He is effectively asking another ruling-party MLA to subordinate constituency politics to the government’s larger project. Then came the attack on Abitkar. To publicly accuse the party’s Kolhapur Guardian Minister of failing to strengthen the organisation amounts to washing the party’s dirty linen in public. Ministerial Ambition There is another possible explanation for Kshirsagar’s increasingly combative posture: the unresolved question of ministerial ambition. A three-time MLA would naturally expect that electoral experience and political seniority might eventually translate into a Cabinet berth. Instead, when the opportunity came, Eknath Shinde chose Prakash Abitkar and gave him an important Cabinet portfolio. Kshirsagar was left outside the ministry. His present position on the State Planning Board gives him a role, but it is not the same political currency as a Cabinet berth. It would be simplistic to suggest that every recent statement is merely an expression of that disappointment. But it would be equally naïve to ignore the possibility that political frustration has influenced his increasingly assertive posture. The Shaktipeeth issue may simply have provided the trigger. Kshirsagar should also be looking closely at the arithmetic of Kolhapur North. The constituency has a history of surprising political outcomes. Its old-city peth culture is blunt, politically conscious and capable of producing results that defy conventional calculations. The last Assembly election demonstrated this dramatically. Madhurimaraje Chhatrapati’s withdrawal as the Congress candidate left the Opposition scrambling just weeks before polling. Satej Patil then backed municipal corporator Rajesh Latkar, who entered the contest with barely 15 days to campaign. Yet Latkar secured nearly 81,000 votes. Kshirsagar won by around 23,000 votes, but the number that should concern his camp is not merely his winning margin.

A Magyar Reckoning


For a man who once seemed immovable, Viktor Orbán has exited the stage with surprising procedural grace. After 16 years of uninterrupted rule – the longest period by any serving leader in the European Union - Hungary’s most formidable political operator since the Cold War recently conceded defeat to Péter Magyar and his insurgent Tisza party, which secured a two-thirds majority on the back of record turnout.


At a time where strongmen often cling to power, Orbán’s quiet acceptance of the verdict was almost anachronistic. And if there is a classical echo in Orbán’s career, it is not of Julius Caesar who crossed the Rubicon but of an earlier dictator, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, who bent a republic without quite breaking it.


To understand Orbán’s fall, one must first grasp the peculiar trajectory of Hungary itself. Long perched between empires, Hungary’s modern political psyche was forged in alternating bouts of subordination and revolt: under the Habsburgs, through the failed liberal revolutions of 1848–49, and later in the enduring trauma of the Treaty of Trianon signed in June 1920 in the aftermath of the First World War.


Trianon stripped Hungary of roughly two-thirds of its territory and population, leaving millions of ethnic Hungarians outside its borders. This sense of geographical, demographic and psychological loss has echoed through a century of politics, shaping a persistent anxiety about Hungarian sovereignty and national survival.


German occupation in 1944 was followed by Soviet domination after 1945, as Hungary became part of the Eastern bloc. The dramatic Hungarian Revolution of 1956 briefly toppled the communist government before being crushed by Soviet tanks. When communism receded in 1989, Hungary’s integrated into Western structures, joining NATO in 1999 and the European Union in 2004. But democracy in Hungary was a fragile inheritance, layered atop unresolved historical anxieties.


Viktor Orbán understood this rhythm better than most. As a young liberal in 1989, he stood at the reburial of Imre Nagy - the executed leader of 1956 - and demanded the withdrawal of Soviet troops, placing himself squarely in Hungary’s lineage of defiance. His party, Fidesz, began as a youthful, pro-Western formation. But his later transformation, from libertarian reformer to nationalist conservative, was a shrewd adaptation to Hungary’s deeper currents.


By the time he returned to power in 2010, Orbán had begun constructing what he would call an “illiberal democracy” - a system that preserved elections while steadily hollowing out liberal constraints. His cordial ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin reflected both economic pragmatism - particularly Hungary’s dependence on Russian energy - and a shared scepticism of Western liberalism. At the same time, Orbán cultivated political affinities with U.S. President Donald Trump, presenting himself as part of a transnational conservative resistance to globalist elites.


Nowhere was this more visible than during Europe’s migration crisis of 2015. While Angela Merkel pursued an open-door policy towards refugees, Orbán erected border fences and cast himself as a defender of Europe’s Christian identity against uncontrolled migration from Islamist regions.


Over successive terms, Orbán reshaped Hungary’s constitutional order, curtailed judicial independence, brought much of the media ecosystem under loyalist control and cultivated a class of business elites tied to the state.


Critics, especially in Western Europe, likened his model to that of Putin’s. But whereas Putin crossed his Rubicon by dismantling meaningful electoral competition, Orbán stopped short.


He offered Hungarians stability after the economic turbulence of the late 2000s, lowered unemployment and projected a sense of national purpose. His defiance of Brussels, his hostility to migration and his insistence on sovereignty resonated with voters who felt that ‘liberal’ Europe neither understood nor respected Hungary’s past.


His successor Péter Magyar is no ideological opposite but a former insider who embodies continuity as much as change. The election result, after all, was not a wholesale repudiation of conservatism but a revolt against concentration of power. It suggests that Hungarian voters were less interested in dismantling Orbán’s worldview than in restoring competitive politics.


His departure may smooth decision-making in Brussels and strengthen the EU’s collective posture. It also deprives a loose network of nationalist leaders, from Marine Le Pen to Robert Fico, of a pivotal ally.


But it would be premature to read Orbán’s fall as the end of the illiberal moment. The forces of national identity, scepticism of elites, resistance to supranational authority that he harnessed remain potent across Europe and beyond. If anything, his long tenure demonstrated how durable such politics can be when fused with institutional control.

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