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.

Smiling Banker, Silent Betrayal

C.S. Krishnamurthy

Jun 21, 2025

4 min read

The Kota bank fraud case is a reminder that the strength of a financial institution is not its systems but the character of those who run them.

It reads like a Netflix crime drama except that it is real. A 26-year-old relationship manager (RM) at ICICI Bank in Kota, Rajasthan, allegedly embezzled Rs. 4.58 crore from unaware depositors, primarily senior citizens, to fund her addiction to futures and options (F&O) trading in stock market. The fraud spanned three years, went undetected by branch managers, and was finally unearthed not by complaint but by the bank’s internal audit team.

While the bank has refunded all affected customers and reiterated “no loss to any depositor,” the case leaves behind more questions than answers. It is a textbook case demanding scrutiny from financial, psychological, ethical, and technological angles.

At the heart of this deception lies the troubling psyche of a young banker who was entrusted with other people’s wealth -and let down that trust spectacularly. Was it a case of financial desperation, aspirational overload or the classic ‘get rich quick’ disease triggered by market mania?

There is a psychological phenomenon called speculative compulsion, wherein individuals perceive stock market gains as a personal validation tool. The thrill of F&O trading is addictive, and, like substance abuse, it requires higher risks to chase previous highs. This case reflects how unregulated desire, mixed with access and knowledge, can brew a financial disaster.

Vulnerable Targets

Shockingly, most victims were elderly clients. What made them easy prey? Senior citizens tend to place implicit trust in relationship managers, rarely questioning irregularities in transactions. Compounding this is their limited familiarity with digital banking tools such as net banking, SMS alerts and online fraud indicators meaning that many fail to notice anomalies until the damage is done. Moreover, when they do sense something amiss, they often react with hesitation or self-blame, unlike younger customers who typically respond swiftly to unauthorised debits. This case underscores the urgent necessity for banks to implement dedicated safeguards for senior citizens, including dual-verification procedures, regular account summary reviews and scheduled outreach programs to bolster financial literacy among the elderly.

The crime was camouflaged so well that even branch staff remained oblivious to it. This concealment raises troubling concerns about the effectiveness of oversight mechanisms. Why were the bank’s internal systems unable to detect red flags over such an extended period? The absence of dual-authorisation checks for significant fund withdrawals or suspicious account movements points to a worrying gap in protocol. Equally baffling is why the matter surfaced only after a routine internal audit—years after the fraud began. While the audit team deserves credit for eventually exposing the scam, the delay illustrates that banks often act reactively rather than proactively in detecting internal fraud. This incident makes it clear that rigorous internal controls are not a luxury but a necessity.

Legal Implications

From a legal standpoint, the accused may face charges under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, including those related to criminal breach of trust, cheating, and cybercrime. But broader institutional accountability remains in question. The Reserve Bank of India must now consider strengthening whistle-blower frameworks and perhaps mandating periodic ethics audits for staff. At the same time, the Securities and Exchange Board of India could examine whether existing safeguards in the futures and options segment are sufficient to detect or deter trading with illegally acquired funds. And crucially, should banks be held accountable for negligence in fiduciary duties, even in cases where customer losses are reimbursed? These are not merely legal formalities but they represent core ethical challenges that the financial industry must confront.

Refunding customers is a form of damage control; reforming internal systems is the only path to true damage prevention. There are, at the very least, three urgent takeaways for the banking sector. First, banks must adopt real-time behavioural tracking using AI-based tools that monitor staff activity and account movements to flag suspicious patterns before they snowball into major fraud. Second, financial institutions must invest in sustained customer awareness campaigns by especially targeting senior citizens with a focus on enabling them to understand alerts, monitor their accounts regularly, and recognise early signs of deception. Finally, banks need to foster a robust internal culture of accountability. This means instituting rigorous ethical training, conducting regular background checks, and enforcing a strict, zero-tolerance stance toward any procedural lapses or circumvention of internal controls.

This chilling incident from Kota is not just a tale of one rogue employee. It lays bare the system’s moral weakness and the troubling lack of protection for its most vulnerable citizens. The case exposes how easily access, authority and digital opacity can be misused when internal oversight is lax and ethical guardrails are weak. It is a wake-up call not only for banks but for regulators, reminding them that technological sophistication cannot be a substitute for institutional integrity.

In an age where financial services are being increasingly digitised and personalised, banks must remember: trust cannot be outsourced to systems alone. It must be guarded by humans of character, monitored by transparent processes, and anchored in empathy. At the end of the day, the strength of a financial institution is measured not just by its balance sheet, but by the trust it inspires in the people it serves.

One can only hope that the next time a relationship manager walks into a senior citizen’s home, it will be to serve.

(The writer is former banker based in Bengaluru.)

The BJP’s Ganesha Gambit

Smiling Banker, Silent Betrayal

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