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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.

Beyond Ethanol: The Bigger Story Is India's Innovation Journey

Writer: Rajendra Joshi
Rajendra Joshi
Jul 23
3 min read

Ethanol is one of many stepping stones on the journey towards cleaner energy systems.

Energy transitions are rarely linear. Every major technological shift begins as an alternative, matures through public policy and market acceptance, and is eventually challenged by newer innovation. The debate surrounding ethanol-blended petrol in India should therefore be viewed through this larger prism rather than through the narrow lens of partisan politics.


Since the National Biofuel Policy was unveiled in 2018, India's ethanol blending programme has expanded with little political resistance. Brazil's four decades of experience with ethanol as a transport fuel partly inspired the policy. It sought to reduce dependence on imported crude oil, improve energy security, curb vehicular emissions and provide an additional revenue stream for sugarcane farmers. Those objectives remain largely unchanged.


Yet, in recent months, ethanol has unexpectedly become a subject of political confrontation. The irony is striking. At precisely the moment the country is debating the merits of one transition fuel, Indian scientists and engineers are demonstrating technologies that could redefine the next generation of clean mobility.


The inauguration of India's first hydrogen-powered passenger train marks one such milestone. Flagged off by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the 89-kilometre Jind-Sonipat route in Haryana, the train employs indigenous hydrogen fuel-cell technology to generate electricity, with water as the only emission. The project reduces the carbon footprint of rail transport and places India among a handful of countries experimenting with hydrogen-powered railway systems. Equipped with a 3,200-horsepower engine and ten coaches, it is also among the world's most powerful hydrogen trains. The significance of this development extends beyond railways. It signals the direction in which transport technology is headed.


If July has been remarkable for clean mobility, it has been equally significant for India's space ambitions. Private space startup Skyroot Aerospace successfully launched its indigenously developed orbital launch vehicle, Vikram-1, under the mission Aagman. It marked the first successful attempt by an Indian private company to place a payload into orbit using its own launch vehicle.


The achievement underlines the transformation underway in India's innovation ecosystem. Until recently, space exploration remained the exclusive domain of government agencies. Opening the sector to private enterprise has created opportunities that are already attracting international commercial interest. It is a reminder that policy reforms often create the conditions for technological breakthroughs.


A similar story is unfolding in the electric vehicle sector. Bengaluru-based startup Vemag Labs has reportedly developed a technology that eliminates dependence on rare-earth permanent magnets used in electric motors. If commercialised, the innovation could reduce reliance on China's dominance of the global rare-earth supply chain—a longstanding strategic vulnerability for the automotive industry.


These are not isolated success stories. They represent a broader pattern in India's technological evolution.


Artificial intelligence is reshaping the global digital economy. Battery technologies continue to evolve. Hydrogen is emerging as the next frontier of clean transportation, while advanced nuclear technologies are receiving renewed attention. Scientific progress is compressing technological cycles so that today's breakthrough may become tomorrow's baseline.


In this context, ethanol should be seen neither as the ultimate solution nor as a policy failure. It is a transitional technology—an important bridge between conventional fossil fuels and cleaner energy systems. It has helped lower crude oil imports, strengthened the rural economy through higher demand for agricultural feedstock and contributed to India's climate commitments. Equally, it has technological, economic and environmental limitations that future innovations may overcome.


The real concern arises when scientific progress becomes captive to political narratives. Democratic scrutiny of public policy is both necessary and desirable. Governments must justify investments, evaluate costs and remain accountable for outcomes. But reducing every technological intervention to political binaries risks distracting attention from the larger national objective of building scientific capability and technological competitiveness.


The trajectory of innovation suggests that tomorrow's public debate may no longer revolve around ethanol. It may centre on hydrogen-powered vehicles, synthetic fuels, next-generation batteries or technologies still confined to research laboratories. Public policy must therefore remain flexible enough to adapt to continuous scientific change rather than become entrenched in ideological positions.


India's hydrogen train, its privately developed orbital rocket and advances in electric mobility together illustrate an important reality. The country's scientific ecosystem is entering a phase of rapid expansion, with innovation increasingly driven by collaboration between public institutions, private enterprise and research startups.


Politics has every right to question policy. It should not, however, become an obstacle to scientific progress. History shows that societies which embrace innovation invariably lead the next wave of economic growth, while those trapped in ideological contests often find themselves catching up.


The future of mobility will ultimately be determined not in television studios or political rallies, but in laboratories, research institutions and technology startups. India's challenge is not merely to participate in that future—it is to help shape it.

(The writer is a senior journalist based in Kolhapur. Views personal.)

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