Much Criticism, Little Action

Amid mounting economic pain, Maharashtra’s Opposition is losing the plot on price rise.

As tensions between the United States and Iran roil energy markets, crude prices have surged, currencies have wobbled and inflationary tremors have spread across much of the developing world. India, heavily dependent on imported oil, finds itself exposed once again to the brutal arithmetic of global instability. The rupee is under strain. Petrol prices have breached the psychologically important Rs 100-per-litre mark in many places. Transport costs are rising. Vegetables, grains and household essentials are becoming steadily dearer. For millions of middle- and lower-income families, the monthly budget is beginning to resemble an exercise in controlled collapse.

The Central government has responded with sombre realism. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent advisory urging restraint in discretionary spending, cautioning against unnecessary foreign travel and encouraging work-from-home arrangements carried an unmistakable message: difficult days lie ahead. Governments cannot fully insulate citizens from global oil shocks. But they can attempt to manage expectations and preserve public confidence. Despite mounting frustration over prices, the Prime Minister continues to retain a significant reservoir of political trust. That trust rests less on ideological loyalty than on a perception that he is decisive in moments of crisis.

Distressed Economy

Yet even the most resilient political capital can erode when inflation enters the household kitchen. Nowhere is the stress more visible than in Maharashtra, where rising fuel prices and diesel shortages have collided with an already distressed agrarian economy. Farmers in several districts have reportedly queued overnight at petrol pumps in search of diesel to run tractors and irrigation systems. Agricultural activity has slowed in pockets. Sowing and harvesting schedules face disruption. What appears at first glance to be a temporary supply problem threatens to become something more dangerous: a chain reaction of lower productivity, rising debt and deepening rural anxiety.

The plight of onion farmers captures the wider dysfunction. Maharashtra’s government, led by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, recently increased the onion procurement price to Rs 15 per kilogram, presenting the move as evidence of official sensitivity to farmers’ concerns. Yet cultivators complain that they continue to receive barely Rs 200-300 per quintal in actual market conditions, far below sustainable levels. Opposition parties have demanded a minimum support price of Rs 3,000 per quintal. Between these competing claims lies the grim reality of Indian agriculture: production costs rise relentlessly while political responses often remain symbolic, fragmented or delayed.

The familiar promise of a farm-loan waiver floats once more through Maharashtra’s political atmosphere like an overused campaign slogan. Loan waivers offer temporary relief but rarely structural reform. Farmers know this. Increasingly, voters do too.

Such conditions should provide fertile political ground for the Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), the uneasy coalition comprising the Congress, the Sharad Pawar faction of the Nationalist Congress Party and the Shiv Sena (UBT). Inflation, rural distress and fuel-price anger are traditionally the ingredients from which mass opposition movements are forged. Maharashtra itself has a long history of farmer mobilisations and anti-price-rise agitations. Yet the present Opposition appears oddly incapable of converting public anger into sustained political energy.

To be fair, the MVA has not been entirely inactive. Opposition leaders have organised protests, including the Shetkari Kranti Maha Morcha in Nashik district. Congress leaders have demanded stronger procurement guarantees for farmers. Rohit Pawar of the NCP-SP has aggressively attacked the Centre over fuel prices and highlighted the enormous profits earned by state-owned oil companies over the past decade.

No Political Imagination

But isolated protests and press conferences do not amount to a movement. The deeper problem with Maharashtra’s opposition is not a lack of criticism. It is a lack of political imagination. Modern opposition politics requires more than denunciation. Voters expect organisation, consistency and a credible programme of action. Instead, much of the opposition’s conduct appears episodic and media-centric, designed less to mobilise citizens than to generate headlines.

Economic pain creates two simultaneous impulses among voters: anger and caution. Citizens may resent rising prices, but they also seek reassurance that alternatives exist. Merely amplifying despair is not enough. The electorate wants evidence that someone possesses a workable plan to navigate the crisis.

At present, the Opposition’s message often sounds curiously hollow. It identifies suffering but rarely articulates a coherent framework for relief. What precisely would the MVA do differently on fuel taxation, procurement policy or rural credit? How would it cushion small traders and transport workers from cascading inflation? What institutional mechanisms would it create to monitor prices or prevent hoarding? These questions remain largely unanswered.

This is where Modi retains an advantage despite mounting economic discomfort. His government projects the image of possessing direction during turbulence. Leadership in crises is often judged less by immediate outcomes than by perceptions of control. Many Indians continue to believe that the prime minister is at least attempting to steer the country through a dangerous global storm.

The opposition, by contrast, risks appearing reactive rather than purposeful. That is a dangerous position in Maharashtra, a state whose politics has historically rewarded organisational stamina and visible grassroots engagement. The state’s farmers, labourers, small traders and lower-middle classes are not naïve observers of politics. They can distinguish between performative indignation and genuine mobilisation.

The current inflationary spiral may yet deepen. Fuel prices have risen repeatedly within weeks, pushing up transport costs and, in turn, the price of essentials. Inflation corrodes political patience.

For the Opposition, this moment represents both danger and opportunity. But if it continues relying primarily on slogans and scattered demonstrations, it risks becoming politically irrelevant precisely when conditions favour dissent.

The Maharashtra opposition must ask itself honestly: what is our plan? Until they answer that question with substance, not slogans, they risk being remembered not as the voice of the people in a time of crisis — but as a distant echo. The hour demands more. So do the people of Maharashtra.

(The writer is a political observer. Views personal.)