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...

min read

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.

Publish the Rhythm

Rashmi Kulkarni

Sep 7, 2025

3 min read

The Missing Middle series, Part 4

Not every fire is a crisis. Some are just unspoken timing issues.

When do we check in? Who owns this next? When will the stuck work move?

If those moments aren’t pre-decided, they turn into repeated distractions. And even your best people end up waiting.

Rhythm isn’t about meetings.

It’s about visible, shared time.

• Check-ins don’t depend on memory

• Escalations have fixed slots

• Handoffs name who owns it, by when, and what “done” means

• Reviews happen … whether you’re in or not

It doesn’t need to be complicated. But it does need to be published.

The Week That Breathes

Start here. Don’t aim for perfection … aim for predictability. This rhythm isn’t a meeting culture. It’s a movement culture. It tells your team: this is where decisions happen, and this is when we fix what’s stuck.

Mon 10:00–10:20 – Ops Check

Start the week with what’s live: each WIP lane, the current owner, next decision due, and one flagged risk. Short. Focused. No project plans, no slides.

Tue 11:30–12:00 – Escalation Window #1

Ambers land here. Reds too … but only the real ones. No pinging leads on WhatsApp. If it’s not urgent, it waits for the slot. That’s how trust builds.

Wed 2:00–4:00 – Deep Work (Do Not Disturb)

Founders and managers are offline. This is not “off.” It’s when the system runs without checking first. And yes … it might wobble the first few weeks. That’s the point.

Thu 11:30–12:00 – Escalation Window #2

Same rule. If it didn’t close on Tuesday, it lands here … and now with context and a clear “what’s blocked” ask.

Fri 4:00–4:30 – Close & Commit

What shipped, what slipped, and what rolls forward. The goal? Zero “unclear status” items in anyone’s head over the weekend.

Daily (5 mins) – Standup by lane

No long updates. No monologues. If nothing changed, say so and move on. This is heartbeat, not theatre.

The School Bus Playbook

7:18 a.m.: “Bus kidhar hai?” Parents’ group lights up. Driver gets 6 calls. Someone shares a live location. Now add rhythm:

• Bag packed at night

• Kids at gate by 7:25

• Volunteer confirms headcount

• Escalate only if 10+ mins late

• Class teacher looped in only if two delays occur

Same people. Same bus.

Less panic.

Work didn’t get easier.

Time got structured.

What a good handoff

sounds like

From Sales to Ops

Owner: Priya

Next decision: Client sign-off

Due: Wed 5 PM

“Done” = invoice raised

Escalate in Thursday window if stuck

No flourish. Just clarity.

The part most teams

miss: Mindset

You can publish the slots. You can run the check-ins. But unless the mindset shifts, rhythm won’t hold. If the team still believes “it’s safer to wait for approval,” no calendar will fix it.

People need to know:

• Their decisions are trusted

• Mistakes will be handled inside the system

• You won’t override unless the ladder calls for it

This takes more than policy. It takes habit change, nudges, and sometimes, real coaching.

Rhythm isn’t just scheduling work. It’s transferring belief.

Roll it out (30–60–90)

Days 1–30 – Stabilise

n Pick two flows

n Publish the diary

n Enforce owner tags

n Kill side-DMs during escalation windows

Days 31–60 – Strengthen

Add a third flow
Define non-interference zones
Document “what good looks like” in one page

Days 61–90 – Scale

Add finance or hiring
Start a decision log
Simulate a stress week (double volume, observe what bends)
Signals it’s working
You stop hearing “Just checking if you saw this…”
Standups start with “Here’s what moved”
Handoffs name owner + next decision + done definition
After-hours messages drop
You leave early without guilt

That’s calm by design. Not a break from chaos … a replacement for it.

What this series really said

Headcount adds capacity. The middle adds speed
Ownership needs to be published, not implied
Founders scale through structure, not presence
Rhythm is how it all becomes daily

You don’t need more tools.

You don’t need louder follow-ups.

You just need time that runs in public … and decisions that land where they belong.

Take one hour today.

Block Mon ops, Tue/Thu windows, Fri close. Post the handoff script in your busiest lane.

And then let the system wobble. That’s when it learns to stand.

(Rashmi Kulkarni is Co-founder at PPS Consulting. Views personal. Write to rashmi@ppsconsulting.biz.)

1 Comment

rahul

Sep 11, 2025

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