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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.

Empowerment Beyond Enrolment

Writer: Archita Gaur
Archita Gaur
6 minutes ago
4 min read

While India’s women-focused programmes are moving from welfare delivery to economic empowerment, sustained incomes and market access remain the real test.

For decades, women-focused welfare in India has largely centred on social protection and household well-being. In recent years, however, the policy conversation has increasingly shifted towards economic empowerment by helping women earn, build enterprises, access formal finance and participate more actively in markets. Initiatives such as self-help groups, the Lakhpati Didi programme and livelihood-focused interventions reflect this changing approach. Yet, the real measure of empowerment lies not simply in the number of women reached by schemes, but in whether these interventions translate into sustained incomes, productive employment and greater economic agency. India’s next challenge, therefore, is to move beyond welfare delivery towards creating pathways through which women can build durable and independent livelihoods.


Economic Agents

India’s approach to women-centred development is gradually moving from providing benefits to creating economic opportunities. Self-help groups have become an important part of this transition by bringing women together, improving access to credit and connecting them with livelihood opportunities. The National Rural Livelihoods Mission has further strengthened this ecosystem by supporting women’s collectives, skills and enterprise development.


More recently, initiatives such as Lakhpati Didi have placed greater emphasis on raising women’s incomes rather than merely expanding scheme coverage. This represents an important shift in how women’s economic progress is measured. However, achieving higher and sustained incomes requires more than access to finance or training. Women also need reliable market linkages, productive assets, digital access, skills and the freedom to make economic decisions. The question, therefore, is whether India’s expanding network of women-focused programmes can convert participation into lasting economic mobility.


Self-help groups have emerged as one of the most significant platforms for women’s economic participation in rural India. By pooling savings, facilitating access to credit and creating collective enterprises, SHGs can reduce some of the financial and institutional barriers that individual women face. Through the National Rural Livelihoods Mission, this model has expanded across rural communities, creating an ecosystem that links women to finance, skills and livelihood opportunities.


The Lakhpati Didi initiative builds on this foundation by focusing on a more ambitious outcome: enabling women in SHGs to earn at least Rs. 1 lakh annually. The emphasis is therefore shifting from participation in a programme to achieving a measurable improvement in household income. But reaching this target sustainably depends on whether women can move beyond small, low-return activities and gain access to better markets, technology, skills and opportunities to scale their enterprises.


Missing Link

Access to a scheme does not necessarily translate into economic empowerment. Women may receive training, credit or membership in an SHG, yet continue to operate small enterprises with limited capital, weak market access and low returns. Many livelihood activities remain concentrated in sectors where competition is high and opportunities for expansion are limited.


This is where the next phase of women’s economic policy needs greater attention. Finance must be accompanied by market linkages, business skills, technology and access to productive assets. Connecting women-led enterprises to larger value chains and formal markets can help them move from subsistence activities towards more commercially viable businesses. Without these complementary interventions, expanding scheme coverage may improve participation without creating the sustained income growth that economic empowerment ultimately requires.


Even when livelihood opportunities are available, women’s economic participation is shaped by constraints that programmes cannot address in isolation. Unpaid care work, limited mobility, unequal access to assets and technology, and social expectations can restrict the time and resources women are able to devote to paid work or entrepreneurship.


This makes the broader policy environment as important as the scheme itself. Affordable childcare, safe transportation, access to digital infrastructure and easier access to formal finance can determine whether women are able to sustain economic activity. For women-centred welfare programmes to become engines of empowerment, these constraints must be treated not as peripheral social issues but as core economic policy concerns.


Sustainable Empowerment

The next step is to move from a scheme-centric approach to an ecosystem approach. Women need not only access to programmes, but sustained support that helps them build viable livelihoods. This means strengthening market linkages, improving access to affordable credit, expanding digital and financial literacy, and connecting women-led enterprises with larger supply chains.


Greater emphasis should also be placed on measuring outcomes rather than inputs. The number of women enrolled in a programme is useful, but changes in income, employment, enterprise survival and access to markets provide a stronger indication of economic empowerment. A shift towards such outcome-based monitoring can help policymakers identify which interventions are creating lasting improvements and where additional support is needed.


For women to move from livelihood support to meaningful economic independence, the focus must eventually shift from creating enterprises to helping them grow. Women-owned businesses often face constraints in accessing larger markets, technology, working capital and formal business networks. As a result, many remain small even when demand exists for their products and services.


Government procurement, digital commerce platforms, producer collectives and stronger linkages with MSMEs can help bridge this gap. The objective should not be to move every woman into entrepreneurship, but to ensure that those who choose it have a realistic pathway to scale. Similarly, women seeking wage employment need access to formal jobs with opportunities for skill development and advancement. Economic empowerment, therefore, requires creating pathways from participation to productivity, and from productivity to higher incomes.


(The writer is an economics postgraduate from Jawaharlal Nehru University with research interests in economic policy, trade and global governance. Views personal.)

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