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By:

Akhilesh Sinha

25 June 2025 at 2:53:54 pm

Congress tries a ‘third’ hand

New Delhi: The BJP latest manoeuvre in elevating Nitin Nabin as the party’s national working president has had consequences in Maharashtra’s two biggest cities - Mumbai and Pune. The result has left the Congress party in a curiously ambivalent mood: quietly pleased by the opportunities created, yet wary of the turbulence ahead. In Maharashtra, the immediate beneficiary of the BJP’s move is Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena. The BJP’s organisational signal has strengthened its hand in the forthcoming...

Congress tries a ‘third’ hand

New Delhi: The BJP latest manoeuvre in elevating Nitin Nabin as the party’s national working president has had consequences in Maharashtra’s two biggest cities - Mumbai and Pune. The result has left the Congress party in a curiously ambivalent mood: quietly pleased by the opportunities created, yet wary of the turbulence ahead. In Maharashtra, the immediate beneficiary of the BJP’s move is Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena. The BJP’s organisational signal has strengthened its hand in the forthcoming elections to the BMC, Asia’s richest civic body, and in Pune, the state’s second city. For Shinde, whose legitimacy still rests on a contentious split with the party founded by Bal Thackeray, any reinforcement from the BJP’s formidable machine is welcome. For Uddhav Thackeray, who leads the rival Shiv Sena (UBT), the message is ominous. His party, once the natural custodian of Marathi pride in Mumbai, now faces the prospect of being squeezed between a BJP-backed Sena on one side and a revived Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) led by his cousin, Raj Thackeray, on the other. Shotgun Alliance That pressure has forced Thackeray into an awkward embrace with his estranged cousin. A reunion of the Thackeray clans, long rumoured and often aborted, has unsettled Thackeray’s MVA ally - the Congress. Signals from the party’s high command suggest a calculated distancing from Shiv Sena (UBT), particularly in Mumbai, where Congress leaders are exploring arrangements with smaller parties rather than committing to a Thackeray-led front. In Pune, the party’s pragmatism is even more pronounced. Quiet efforts are under way to entice Ajit Pawar’s NCP, currently aligned with the BJP, into a tactical understanding for the civic polls. Control of the municipal corporation, even without ideological harmony, is the immediate prize. For the embattled Congress, the civic polls offer a chance to do two things at once. First, by keeping a degree of separation from the Uddhav–Raj combine, it can strengthen its own organisational sinews, which have atrophied after years of playing junior partner. Secondly, it can allow the BJP–Shinde Sena and the Thackeray cousins to polarise the Marathi vote between them, leaving Congress to position itself as a ‘third pole.’ Such a strategy is particularly tempting in Mumbai. A tie-up with outfits like Prakash Ambedkar’s Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) could help Congress consolidate minority, Dalit and tribal voters, constituencies it believes are more reliably mobilised without the ideological baggage of Thackeray’s Sena (UBT). Severing or loosening ties with Shiv Sena (UBT) would also simplify Congress’s messaging ahead of assembly elections elsewhere. In states such as West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, where polls loom next year, the party has historically preferred alliances that allow it to emphasise secular credentials and oppose the BJP without accommodating overtly Hindu nationalist partners. Mixed Signals The Congress’ internal signals, however, are mixed. When talk of a Thackeray reunion resurfaced, Maharashtra Congress leader Vijay Wadettiwar publicly welcomed it, arguing that Raj Thackeray’s limited but distinct vote share could help consolidate Marathi sentiment. Mumbai Congress chief Varsha Gaikwad was more circumspect, hinting that alliances with parties prone to street-level militancy deserved scrutiny. Wadettiwar swiftly clarified that decisions would rest with the party’s senior leadership, underscoring the centralised nature of Congress’s calculus. In Pune, meanwhile, senior leaders are reportedly engaged in discreet conversations with Ajit Pawar, whose defection from his uncle Sharad Pawar’s NCP last year still reverberates through state politics. The outline of a broader strategy is becoming visible. Congress appears content to let the BJP and Shinde’s Sena draw on non-Marathi and anti-dynasty voters, the Thackerays appeal to wounded Marathi pride while it quietly rebuilds among minorities and lower-caste groups. Mumbai Approach Mumbai’s demography lends some plausibility to this approach. Alongside its Marathi core, the city hosts millions of migrants from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand, a constituency that has increasingly gravitated towards the BJP. Raj Thackeray’s strident rhetoric against North Indians, once electorally potent, now risks narrowing his appeal and complicating Uddhav Thackeray’s efforts to broaden his base. None of this guarantees success for Congress. Playing the ‘third pole’ is a delicate art. Yet, the Congress, struggling for survival, has few illusions about sweeping victories. Its aim, for now, is more modest – it is to survive, to remain relevant, and to exploit the cracks opened by its rivals’ rivalries. In Maharashtra’s civic chessboard, that may be advantage enough.

Five Quiet Fractures That Distort Teams Before They Break

Most leadership damage is not caused by bad intent. It’s caused by unseen impact

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Some leadership problems don’t show up as conflict. They show up as silence. Second-guessing.


Cautious execution. People “playing safe” instead of thinking. A team that looks functional… but feels emotionally tired. That’s what this series was really about.


After The People Paradox (Series 7) explored the founder’s view of a team that stops behaving like a family, The Boss Paradox flipped the lens. Same world. Same tension. Different mirror.


We returned to The Workshop — our composite, mid-sized firm — not because it’s unique, but because it’s painfully normal. What happens there happens in startups, family businesses, corporate units, and professional services teams everywhere. And across five parts, one idea kept repeating in different forms: Bosses think they’re leading a system. Teams experience a psychology.


The Communication Gap

This is where most drift begins. Leaders speak in narratives: vision, mission, strategy, direction.


Teams hear consequences: deadlines, expectations, risk, evaluation. So a town hall feels like alignment to the leader… and like ambiguity to the team. People clap, nod, and then walk back to their desks carrying five different interpretations of the same message.


The cost is not confusion. It’s interpretation work - employees spending cognitive energy decoding what the boss “really meant” instead of building what the company actually needs.


The Power Paradox

This is where trust starts getting political. Most bosses believe they reward merit.


Most teams experience favoritism. Not always because leaders are biased — but because criteria often stay invisible. Access, trust, forgiveness, and “being in the room” become signals of value. The team begins to optimise for proximity rather than performance.


The damage is quiet but brutal: people stop competing on excellence and start competing on closeness. The system begins to reward those who are easiest to trust… not always those who are best for the job.


The Pace & Pressure Paradox

This is where urgency becomes culture. A founder’s natural speed is often their superpower.


But inside a team, that speed becomes emotional weather. The boss moves fast. Decides fast. Switches directions fast. The team doesn’t read it as energy — they read it as evaluation. Soon, people stop asking questions. Initiative collapses. Planning becomes reactive. Creativity gets shallow. Execution becomes obedient. The company becomes good at reacting and bad at thinking.


And the founder is often the last person to realise it — because urgency feels productive when you’re the one generating it.


The Boundary Collapse

This is where kindness becomes control. Modern micromanagement rarely looks like shouting.


It looks like: “Just loop me in.” Or: “Stay reachable.” Or: “I’ll quickly tweak it.”


Leaders think they’re being supportive. Teams feel autonomy shrinking. A leave day becomes a soft obligation. A delegated task becomes a conditional trust. A decision becomes temporary until the boss’s instinct kicks in.


And the real cost is not workload. It’s vigilance - employees staying mentally “on” because boundaries feel unstable. Micromanagement today rarely looks like anger.


It looks like kindness without limits.


The System Distortion

This is where organisations drift away from the org chart. Every company has two structures: the formal hierarchy and the invisible influence map. Loyalty, competence, charisma, proximity, and external advisors quietly bend decisions. Unofficial voices start overriding official roles. The team begins to ask: “Who are we really taking direction from?” System distortion is dangerous because it is polite, deniable, and cumulative. It doesn’t create dramatic breakdowns — it creates misalignment, inconsistency, and navigational anxiety. Teams don’t follow the org chart. They follow influence.


Across these five paradoxes, one truth emerges: Most leadership damage is not caused by bad intent. It’s caused by unseen impact. Bosses often mean well. Teams are often capable. But scaling amplifies small distortions into cultural truths.


A phrase becomes a norm. A preference becomes politics. A pace becomes pressure. A helpful override becomes fear. An informal voice becomes governance. And suddenly, the business isn’t breaking — it’s bending.


(The writers are Co-founders at PPS Consulting. They write about the human mechanics of scaling where leadership behavior, team psychology, and operating systems collide. Views personal.)

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