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By:

Rajendra Pandharpure

15 April 2025 at 2:25:54 pm

Pune’s changing political guard

After an eight-year hiatus, the municipal elections promise to usher in a new cohort of politicians and reset the city’s political rhythms Pune:  The long-delayed civic polls herald a generational shift in Pune, arguably Maharashtra’s most politically vibrant city. When voters return to the booths in December, they will be resetting the circuitry of local power. The last municipal elections were held in 2017. Since then, the city’s politics have drifted into a liminal space. The Pune...

Pune’s changing political guard

After an eight-year hiatus, the municipal elections promise to usher in a new cohort of politicians and reset the city’s political rhythms Pune:  The long-delayed civic polls herald a generational shift in Pune, arguably Maharashtra’s most politically vibrant city. When voters return to the booths in December, they will be resetting the circuitry of local power. The last municipal elections were held in 2017. Since then, the city’s politics have drifted into a liminal space. The Pune Municipal Corporation’s (PMC) term expired in May 2022, but the state dithered, leaving India’s seventh-largest city without elected urban governance for almost three years. With the prospect of polls repeatedly deferred, many former corporators had since quietly receded from the daily grind of politics, returning to business interests or simply losing relevance. When the long-pending reservation lottery for civic wards was finally conducted recently, it delivered another shock: dozens of established male aspirants discovered that their seats had vanished from under them. New guard All this has created an unusual political vacuum that younger leaders are eager to fill. Parties across the spectrum, from the BJP to the Congress to the NCP factions, are preparing to field fresher faces. Regardless of who wins, Pune seems destined to witness the rise of a new political class. The churn is already visible. In the 2024 Lok Sabha election, both the BJP’s Murlidhar Mohol and the Congress’s then-candidate Ravindra Dhangekar were relative newcomers to national politics. The city’s Assembly seats have also produced new faces in recent years, including Hemant Rasne and Sunil Kamble. Ajit Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party elevated Subhash Jagtap and Sunil Tingre to leadership roles, giving them a platform to shape the party’s urban strategy. Even the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), a peripheral entity in Pune’s political landscape, is preparing to contest the civic polls with a wholly new leadership slate. The party most uneasy about this transition may be the Congress. Despite routinely polling between 550,000 and 600,000 votes in the city, it has struggled to convert electoral presence into organisational revival. As the Bihar election results were being announced recently, one Pune resident summed up a sentiment widely shared among Congress sympathisers: the party has votes, but not enough dynamic young leaders to carry them. The question, as he put it, is not whether the youth can help the Congress, but whether the Congress will let them. Rewind to the early 2000s, and Pune’s political landscape looked very different. The Congress then had a formidable bench which included Suresh Kalmadi, Chandrakant Shivarkar, Mohan Joshi, Ramesh Bagwe and Abhay Chhajed. The BJP had Pradeep Rawat, Anil Shirole, Girish Bapat, Vijay Kale, Vishwas Gangurde and Dilip Kamble. Sharad Pawar’s NCP, then ascendant, rested on leaders like Ajit Pawar, Ankush Kakade, Vandana Chavan and Ravi Malvadkar. But the 2014 BJP wave flattened the hierarchy. The Congress crumbled; Kalmadi and Rawat faded from view; Gangurde exited the stage. The BJP replaced its old guard with Medha Kulkarni, and then Mukta Tilak, Chandrakant Patil, Bhimrao Tapkir, Madhuri Misal and Jagdish Mulik. Now, as Pune approaches the end of 2025, even Mohol - the BJP’s rising star - risks appearing ‘senior’ in a political landscape tilting toward younger contenders. Demographics are accelerating the shift. Given that Pune’s last civic polls took place eight years ago, an entire cohort of voters since then has reached adulthood. They cast their first ballots in the recent Lok Sabha and Assembly elections; now they will vote in municipal elections for the first time. Their concerns include urban mobility, climate resilience, digital governance, employment differ sharply from the older generation’s priorities. Their political loyalties, still fluid, are likely to crystallise around leaders who can speak to these new anxieties. The coming election promises a radical change in Pune’s political ecosystem. Long dominated by legacy figures, that ecosystem is set for nothing less than a generational reset. The departure of veteran leaders, the decennial rebalancing of parties, and the impatience of a newly enfranchised urban youth all point towards a younger, more competitive, and possibly more unpredictable political order. Whether this transition will deliver better governance remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: the next generation seems determined not to wait another eight years to make itself heard.

Abeer’s Dream and the Plastic Planet

We might one day see our planet wrapped in what looks like a massive plastic bag.

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One morning, my nine-year-old grandson, Abeer, woke up from a frightening dream. He was trembling, his face pale with fear. After soothing him for a while, we gently asked what had happened.


Taking a deep breath, he gathered his courage and began to recount his dream. He said he saw himself walking along a beach in Goa with his parents. The sun was shining, the waves lapping gently against the shore—until, quite suddenly, a giant wave rose from the sea and swept him away.


At first, he was terrified and confused, unable to make sense of what was happening. But after a few moments, the wave seemed to calm down—and then, strangely, it began to speak to him. To his amazement, he realised he could breathe normally underwater. It was as though the sea itself wanted to tell him something, to share its sorrow.


As his fear slowly faded, Abeer began to look around. What he saw next was heartbreaking. The water was choked with countless pieces of plastic—bottles, bags, wrappers, nets—all swirling around him in a vast whirlpool.


Then he spotted a family of sea turtles. The father turtle was struggling to breathe, his nostrils blocked by two plastic straws. The mother turtle’s head and neck were entangled in a nylon fishing net, while the baby was trapped inside a sheet of plastic, flapping her tiny flippers helplessly.


Nearby, a shark was gasping for air, plastic pouches jammed in its gills, bleeding and writhing in pain. A little farther away, a whale swam past with its enormous mouth wide open, filtering the water for plankton—but instead of food, it was swallowing bottles, cans, and plastic bags that drifted all around.


When Abeer finished his story, none of us spoke for several minutes. The room was filled with silence, heavy and thoughtful. It was only a dream, yet it had clearly shaken him to the core.


Finally, he looked up and said with quiet determination that he would never throw away plastic carelessly again. He promised to ensure that no plastic waste would be generated in his home—and that he would urge his friends to do the same.


So, dear readers, welcome to The Plastic Planet!


Often, photographs of Earth taken from space look breathtaking—our planet gleaming in magnificent shades of blue. As we all know, about 71 per cent of the Earth’s surface is covered with water, which is why it is so aptly called the Blue Planet.


Yet, I sometimes fear that in the coming decades, this beautiful blue may begin to fade from satellite images. Instead, we might one day see our planet shrouded in what looks like a massive plastic bag. A grim image, but one that may not be far from reality if we continue our current ways.


Let us then take a closer look at the world of plastics. The word 'plastic' comes from the Greek word 'plastikos', meaning something that can be moulded or shaped with ease. It is an apt description, for plastics are prized for their ability to take on countless forms—bottles, bags, toys, pipes, and much more.


Over the last century and a half, humankind has mastered the art of creating synthetic polymers—materials built from chains of carbon atoms derived from petroleum and other fossil fuels. These polymers consist of long, repeating units of atoms arranged in complex patterns.


It is the length of these chains and the way they are structured that give plastics their unique properties—strength, lightness, and flexibility. In essence, this remarkable structure is what makes them so plastic in the first place.


Yet, the very qualities that make plastic so versatile for humans have turned it into a threat for the planet. What began as an invention of convenience has quietly become a source of global concern.


Perhaps Abeer’s dream was more than just a child’s fancy — perhaps it was the ocean’s way of asking us to listen.


Plastics may have shaped our modern world, but they should not be allowed to reshape our planet’s destiny. Each small act — a refusal, a reuse, a rethink — adds up to something powerful.


More on this next week. Till then, have a nice weekend!


(The author is an environmentalist. Views personal.)

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