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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.

Pakistan’s Floods: Climate Curse or Man-Made Failure?

Writer: Dr. Manisha Shrimali
Dr. Manisha Shrimali
Sep 23, 2025
4 min read

Climate change may fuel Pakistan’s floods, but governance failures are turning them into catastrophes.

Pakistan is once again under water. Vast stretches of Sindh and Baluchistan resemble inland seas. Villages remain cut off; families huddle on rooftops and rescue boats are guided by drones through treacherous waters. Entire districts are submerged while are millions displaced and much of the country’s fragile infrastructure lies in ruins. The government describes this as the worst flooding in four decades - a grim reminder of the deluge of 2022, which left nearly a third of Pakistan submerged, killed more than 1,700 people and displaced millions.


Meteorologists report that rainfall in key provinces has exceeded seasonal averages several times over. The monsoon, supercharged by global warming, has turned unpredictable and more destructive. Climate scientists warn that South Asia, home to one-quarter of the world’s population, is especially exposed to shifts in weather patterns: hotter air holds more moisture, producing heavier downpours. For Pakistan, which relies heavily on the monsoon and is flanked by fragile glacial systems, the risks are existential.


Reckless expansion

Yet the devastation cannot be explained by climate alone. Pakistan’s floods are not just acts of nature but also of neglect. Outdated drainage, dilapidated embankments and reckless expansion into floodplains magnify the toll. Defence and counterterrorism continue to dominate the national budget, while flood-control projects are underfunded or abandoned. Corruption corrodes what little planning exists. The result is a country that greets each monsoon not with resilience but with dread.


This neglect has deep roots. Since the 1950s Pakistan has depended on foreign donors to plug gaps in disaster response. Earthquakes, droughts and especially floods have triggered billions of dollars in aid from the World Bank, IMF, America and countless emergency agencies. Yet the money has rarely translated into robust defences. Much of it is spent on immediate relief, absorbed into bureaucracy, or simply disappears. The unprecedented pledges of support after the 2022 floods, which the UN called a “climate catastrophe” were a squandered opportunity. Little of that money was invested in early-warning systems, resilient infrastructure or proper drainage.


Misplaced priorities

While Pakistan’s generals insist on swelling defence budgets to confront enemies, real or imagined. Political leaders, for their part, prefer the short-term optics of relief distribution to the slow grind of building embankments or regulating urban growth. Pointing fingers at India has become a well-worn reflex. Floods, droughts and water scarcity are framed as the result of hostile meddling. Such deflection may serve politics, but it leaves Pakistanis exposed when the waters rise.


Urbanisation has compounded the problem as cities sprawl chaotically into riverbeds and floodplains. Developers, often politically connected, pave over natural drainage channels. Informal settlements mushroom without planning permission, leaving their residents dangerously exposed. In rural areas, where most of the population lives, flood defences are weak or absent altogether. Embankments crumble, canals silt up and dams remain poorly maintained. In such conditions, even ordinary monsoons overwhelm the system.


Chronic underfunding

The financial crisis makes matters worse. Pakistan’s foreign reserves are thin, its debt unsustainable, its rupee in chronic decline. With little fiscal room, long-term adaptation is endlessly deferred. What scarce funds exist are consumed by subsidies, debt repayments and security outlays. Disaster-resilience schemes, by contrast, are chronically underfunded and often stalled midway.


The consequences are devastating not only for human lives but also for the economy. Agriculture, the country’s largest employer and biggest export earner, is repeatedly battered. Cotton fields vanish under water, livestock perish and food inflation soars. Roads, railways and power lines are washed away, further hobbling growth. Each flood wipes out years of progress, trapping communities in a cycle of destruction and recovery.


The irony is that Pakistan is among the world’s lowest emitters of greenhouse gases, being responsible for less than one percent of global emissions. Yet it ranks among the most climate-vulnerable. Successive governments have seized on this disparity to demand more aid from the West, portraying the floods as punishment for others’ pollution. There is some truth in that argument. But to stop there is to miss half the story as the scale of destruction is not dictated by rainfall alone but by the state’s failure to prepare.


The path forward is clear, if politically unpalatable. Investment must shift from guns to embankments, from short-term relief to long-term resilience. Cities need stricter zoning laws to halt construction on floodplains. Rural areas require properly maintained canals and embankments. Drainage systems, many dating back to colonial times, must be modernised. Transparent use of aid, subject to scrutiny by both donors and domestic watchdogs, could help restore public trust.


None of this is easy in a country beset by political turmoil, insurgencies and economic collapse. But Pakistan has little choice. Climate change will continue to intensify. Glacial melt in the Himalayas and erratic monsoons will only increase flood risks. Without urgent reforms, each disaster will be worse than the last.


For decades Pakistan’s leaders have treated floods as an act of fate, to be endured rather than managed. But fate is not the only culprit. The waters rise because the state has failed to build barriers, both physical and institutional, against them. Unless Pakistan confronts this uncomfortable truth, it will remain trapped in its cycle of deluge and neglect.


(The author is a Mumbai-based educator and an expert on the Indus Waters Treaty. Views personal.)

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