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...

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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.

Reading the Economic Tea Leaves

Amey Chitale

Jan 30, 2025

3 min read

Updated: Jan 31, 2025

Part 3:

A mixed bag of high-frequency indicators suggests India's economic recovery is uneven, but not without promise.

As Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman prepares to unveil the Union Budget on February 1, 2025, policymakers are poring over a complex set of economic signals. Gross Domestic Product figures, while crucial, arrive with a time lag, making High-Frequency Indicators (HFIs) the go-to barometers for assessing India’s economic pulse in real time. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the maestro of macroeconomics, pieces together these fragmented signals from agriculture, industry, and services, painting a portrait of where the country stands.

On the surface, the agricultural sector is basking in a monsoonal afterglow. Water reservoir levels surged to 139.4 billion cubic meters by mid-December, a striking 24 percent increase over last year, setting the stage for a robust second half of FY25. Kharif food grain production hit 164.7 million tonnes—an 11 percent jump—while Rabi sowing inched up by 1.6 percent. Tractor sales, a reliable barometer of rural confidence, climbed to 690,000 units between April and November, signalling resilience. The government’s decision to hike the Minimum Support Price (MSP) by 5 to 12.7 percent across crops has bolstered rural purchasing power, hinting at a GDP boost ahead. Inflationary fears linger, but for now, agriculture appears to be on steady ground.

Passenger vehicle sales, a key indicator of urban demand, experienced a dip in the second quarter but saw a strong recovery during the Diwali season in the third quarter. Domestic air traffic, while still positive, grew by a modest 6.8 percent from April to October, a marked slowdown from the 19.3 percent growth in the same period the previous year. Fuel consumption rose by 3.3 percent from April to November, compared to a 5 percent increase in the prior year. Similarly, power consumption saw a more subdued growth of 3.9 percent, reaching 1,149.5 billion units, down from 9.7 percent the year before. Meanwhile, the agriculture sector’s buoyant performance has buoyed rural demand, cushioning the effects of a tepid urban market.

Unemployment remains a political flashpoint, often wielded by opposition parties to take aim at the government. The latest Periodic Labour Force Survey pegs urban unemployment at 6.4 percent—an improvement, but one that masks a stark gender disparity. While male unemployment stands at 5.7 percent, female unemployment hovers at 8.3 percent. Encouragingly, new Employees’ Provident Fund enrolments crossed 10.5 million between April and October, up from 8.2 million the previous year, and demand for work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act fell by 13.3 percent, suggesting that more rural jobs are emerging outside the safety net.

Then, there’s inflation, a spectre that looms over every economic conversation. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) softened to 4.9 percent between April and November, compared to 5.2 percent the previous year. Core inflation, stripped of volatile food and fuel prices, has cooled to 3.2 percent. But food inflation, the metric that weighs most heavily on household budgets, has risen to 7.9 percent, up from 6.6 percent last year. The Wholesale Price Index (WPI) has rebounded from a 1.3 percent contraction to a 2 percent increase, reflecting an economy where supply-chain pressures are shifting.

Global forces complicate the RBI’s calculus. With the rupee showing signs of depreciation and the Federal Reserve’s rate trajectory uncertain, India’s central bank has opted for patience, keeping policy rates untouched. A Trumpian return to protectionism in the U.S. could disrupt trade flows, while the fragile Israel-Hamas ceasefire may determine the next moves in global energy markets.

One missing piece in this puzzle is private investment, which remains sluggish despite government spending driving infrastructure expansion. India’s industrialists, historically cautious in uncertain times, have held back on large-scale capital expenditures, wary of volatile global conditions and policy risks. While the production-linked incentive (PLI) schemes have seen some success, they have not yet triggered a full-scale private investment boom. The government will be under pressure to balance fiscal prudence with populist spending.

In the months ahead, India’s economic story will be a balancing act between rural optimism and urban sluggishness, between inflationary caution and growth imperatives, between domestic policy and global volatility. The tea leaves are there for the reading; the real question is who gets to write the script.

(The author is a Chartered Accountant and works at Authomotive Division of Mahindra and Mahindra Limited. Views personal.)

The BJP’s Ganesha Gambit

Reading the Economic Tea Leaves

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