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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.

Gold Prices Signal Strong 2026 Outlook

Writer: Ibrahim Patel
Ibrahim Patel
Dec 25, 2025
3 min read

An AI bubble meltdown may push investors away from equities and into gold, while a softer dollar and low rates provide foundational support for price gains.

Gold has reached once-unthinkable prices at USD 4,468 per troy ounce (31.1347 grams) in 2025, gaining over 72.25 per cent this year as of 23 December 2025. Due to record-high prices in the international market, there is reduced interest in spot buying in the Indian bullion market.


In Mumbai, bullion dealers are offering gold at a 1 per cent discount on international market prices, at the all-time high price of Rs 137,000 per 10 grams, excluding 3 per cent GST.Looking ahead to 2026, major themes that carried the gold price to new heights this year will continue to underwrite its trajectory in the months ahead, boosting the metal even further.


Goldman Sachs sees gold prices climbing 14 per cent to USD 4,900 by December 2026 in its base case, it said in a note on Thursday, while citing upside risks to this view due to a potential expansion of diversification to private investors.


Safe-Haven Demand

Its views on commodities for 2026: Goldman Sachs said it expects structurally high central bank demand and cyclical support from US Federal Reserve interest rate cuts to lift the price of gold. It continues to recommend long exposure in the yellow metal. Strong gold exchange-traded fund (ETF) inflows and central bank purchases are projected to continue into next year as investors, particularly in the West, increasingly recognise the hedge value of gold.


Joe Cavatoni, senior market strategist at the WGC, said, “I think the performance of gold (in 2025) speaks volumes about the global perspective on risk and uncertainty. My sense is that we're going to continue to see these challenges in 2026.”


Risk Factor

This will translate into continued strong ETF flows and central bank demand for the monetary metal for 2026, although central bank buying may come at a slower pace than in the past few years. Another potential 2026 tailwind for gold is a correction in artificial intelligence (AI) stocks. Analysts are increasingly warning that this could happen, and it's possible that AI bubble meltdown concerns may push more investors away from equities and into gold in the coming year. Bank of America Global Research told its clients in late October that gold may be one of the strongest hedges if the AI bubble bursts.


“Optimists buy tech, pessimists buy gold, and hedgers buy both.” The uncertainty generated by Trump’s tariffs is beginning to slow down world trade, which has negative consequences for the AI sector. That will be the thing that ends up popping (the AI bubble). The gold price has an inverse relationship with the US dollar and real interest rates. Analysts forecast a weaker dollar and lower rates by mid-2026. A softer dollar and a low-rate environment would provide foundational support for further gold price gains.


The resulting inflation is expected to push the Fed toward quantitative easing (QE), or the purchasing of government bonds to increase money supply and lower long-term rates, which would further bolster the yellow metal's appeal.Global financial services firm Morgan Stanley sees demand for gold from ETFs and central banks pushing the gold price back up above USD 4,500 per ounce by mid-2026. The World Gold Council (WGC) also expects the themes of risk and uncertainty to continue driving gold. Overall, most analysts' gold price predictions for the upcoming year are in the USD 4,500 to USD 5,000 range.


(The writer is a commodities researcher-cum-analyst. Views personal.)


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