top of page

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.

Parched Fields

Correspondent
2 hours ago
2 min read

Maharashtra is staring at a drought-like crisis in large parts of Marathwada and Vidarbha after a prolonged monsoon dry spell have left the kharif crop withering in the fields. The irony is that the state’s rainfall this monsoon is not uniformly bleak. Belying the El Niño weather pattern, Western Maharashtra has received reasonably adequate rain. But this has masked a severe and increasingly localised agricultural crisis in the other parts of the state.


20 of Maharashtra’s 36 districts have thus far recorded rainfall deficits of at least 20 percent, according to government figures. Several areas have gone more than 30 consecutive days without rain. The Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar division in Marathwada recorded a 31.4 percent deficit as of September 14, against a statewide shortfall of 17.5 percent.


For farmers, the significance of a dry spell is not captured by the statewide average. Soybean, cotton and pulses are standing crops whose prospects deteriorate rapidly when the rain disappears at a critical stage of the kharif season. In the worst-hit belts, the question is increasingly shifting from whether yields will be affected to how much of the crop can still be salvaged. The El Niño weather pattern has further complicated an already uneven monsoon.


The government has begun the machinery of response. Cabinet ministers have been asked to complete a preliminary drought review within a week, followed by crop-loss panchnamas from October 5. Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde has assured farmers that the government will provide compensation and said Vidarbha, particularly Marathwada, has received inadequate rainfall.


But the gap between recognising distress and delivering relief is now the critical issue. Opposition parties are demanding an immediate drought declaration in severely affected areas, arguing that farmers cannot be made to wait for an elaborate bureaucratic process. NCP (SP) chief Sharad Pawar has sought at least Rs. 50,000 per hectare for crop losses. Other demands include Rs. 25,000 in assistance for agricultural-labourer families, a complete farm-loan waiver and higher incentives.


The Mahayuti government must ensure that assessments must be swift enough to match the speed at which agricultural losses are accumulating.


There is also a larger lesson in Maharashtra’s uneven rainfall. A state-level deficit can conceal a much more serious regional emergency. Western Maharashtra’s relatively better rainfall cannot become a statistical cushion for drought-hit districts elsewhere.


Relief must follow assessment without delay, and the worst-hit districts must receive attention proportionate to the damage. Maharashtra knows the economics of drought all too well. A weak or badly distributed monsoon cuts farm incomes, strains rural employment, increases indebtedness and eventually pushes pressure onto the state’s finances. The difficulty for a government is ensuring that relief arrives before a rainfall failure becomes a livelihood crisis. The rains have failed farmers. The government’s response cannot do the same. 

Comments

bottom of page