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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.

India’s Goldilocks Gamble

Writer: Amey Chitale
Amey Chitale
Jan 21
4 min read

The economy’s rare mix of growth, low inflation and big spending must give way to innovation or risk stalling.

The Indian economy’s performance in 2025 confounded sceptics. Even as tariff threats from the United States loomed and global trade grew choppier, domestic consumption proved sturdy enough to carry growth beyond expectations. Inflation collapsed with startling speed as consumer prices slid from 4.26 percent in January to a record-low 0.25 percent in October, while wholesale prices turned negative at minus 0.32 percent in November. Input costs eased, margins fattened and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) found itself presiding over a rare ‘Goldilocks’ moment with strong growth and controlled inflation.


Low inflation buttressed purchasing power, encouraged borrowing and allowed credit to flow freely into the economy. It also gave policymakers the confidence to persist with a strategy they have increasingly embraced over the past four years: by using capital expenditure as the principal lever of growth.


Consumer Surplus

Domestic demand does not rise by accident. It depends on a healthy consumer surplus which is the gap between what people are willing to pay and what they actually do. That, in turn, relies on more than shiny products or clever marketing. Roads, railways, power grids and urban infrastructure all determine whether demand can be sustained. At the heart of India’s recent expansion lies a determined push to rebuild this ecosystem through capital spending.


The numbers tell the story. National capital investment, including state spending, has risen from 1.7 percent of GDP in 2013–14 to 3.2 percent in 2024–25, with effective capital expenditure touching 4.1 percent of GDP. Utilisation has also improved. In the first half of 2025–26, government capex usage reached 51.8 percent, up sharply from 37.3 percent a year earlier, signalling an effort to front-load projects and keep construction humming. A larger share of national income is now being ploughed back into productive assets.


Central government spending has led the charge. Capital outlay climbed from Rs. 5.54 trillion in 2022–23 to Rs. 9.5 trillion in 2023–24, with targets of Rs. 10.18 trillion for 2024–25 and Rs.11.21 trillion budgeted for 2025–26. By November 2025, nearly 58.7 percent of the latest allocation had already been spent, suggesting that the pace may moderate later in the year. More than half of this outlay went to roads and railways, underscoring the state’s enduring faith in concrete and steel as engines of growth.


Three ministries dominated the splurge. Road transport remained the most prolific spender, railways followed close behind and defence also stepped up. By December 2025, railways had exhausted about 80 percent of their capital budget, while defence had used roughly 76 percent. The quality of this expenditure mattered as much as its scale. Capital spending grew by 10.1 percent in 2025, comfortably outpacing revenue expenditure at 6.7 percent, signalling a preference for asset creation over consumption. Combined with credible fiscal management, this helped keep borrowing costs contained and investor confidence intact.


States, long responsible for much of India’s infrastructure, were coaxed into spending more through a mix of incentives and competition. The centre’s flagship Scheme for Special Assistance to States for Capital Investment offers 50-year interest-free loans, often tied to reforms in electricity distribution or urban governance. In the 2025–26 budget, Rs. 1.5 lakh crore was allocated to the scheme, taking total sanctions since inception to over Rs. 3.6 lakh crore. The result was striking: 22 states recorded growth of more than 10 percent in their own capital spending. New initiatives like the Urban Challenge Fund, relaxed borrowing limits for power-sector reforms and an Investment Friendliness Index further stoked this race to build.


Private Capital

Public investment, however, can only carry an economy so far. Private capital must eventually take the baton. Here the picture in 2025 was mixed. Spending hit a record ₹6.56 trillion in 2024–25 but is projected to fall by about 25 percent in 2025–26 as firms turn cautious amid global uncertainty, high interest rates and the end of earlier capacity cycles. Yet the quality of investment remained encouraging. Manufacturing accounted for more than 65 percent of gross fixed assets, over half of it in machinery and equipment. Firms cited income generation and technological upgrading as their chief motives, with renewables, information technology and transport drawing particular interest. India’s growing network of global capability centres has become a quiet pillar of high-value services and innovation.


If India’s ambition is to become a developed nation by 2047, however, concrete and machinery will not suffice. The next leap must come from ideas. Here lies the economy’s most stubborn weakness. Research and development spending has languished at just 0.6 to 0.7 percent of GDP for nearly two decades. In absolute terms it has grown eightfold to around Rs. 2 lakh crore, but this pales beside the effort of richer peers. South Korea spends over 5 percent of GDP on R&D, the United States nearly 3.6 percent and China about 2.6 percent, mostly driven by private firms. In India, innovation remains heavily dependent on the state, with the centre and states together funding over half of all R&D.


The cost of this imbalance is high. Evidence suggests that a one-percentage-point rise in R&D spending can lift per capita income by 0.13 percent, while artificial intelligence alone could close up to 35 percent of the productivity gap needed for sustained 8 percent growth. Recognising this, the government has begun to pivot. The Anusandhan National Research Foundation aims to mobilise Rs. 50,000 crore by 2028, drawing in industry and philanthropy. A new Rs. 1 lakh crore RDI scheme offers long-term, low-interest loans for high-risk projects in deep technology, energy security and climate solutions.


Asset monetisation provides another piece of the puzzle. India’s first National Monetisation Pipeline has already unlocked Rs. 5.6 lakh crore (94 percent of its target). The next phase aims for Rs. 10 lakh crore over five years. If executed well, this virtuous cycle could help push debt towards 50 percent of GDP by 2031 without throttling growth.


India’s 2025 performance showed what disciplined macroeconomics and determined public investment can achieve. The harder task now is to convert this momentum into a durable, innovation-driven expansion. Roads and railways have laid the groundwork. Whether India reaches its 2047 destination will depend on what it builds next in laboratories, factories and minds.


(The author is a Chartered Accountant with a leading company in Mumbai. Views personal.)

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