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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.

Sources of generation and types of waste

Writer: Dr. Sanjay Joshi
Dr. Sanjay Joshi
Sep 14, 2024
2 min read

Updated: Oct 21, 2024

Friends, so far, we have learned the basics of waste generated in our houses in general. However, our house is not the only source where all types of waste are generated. There are many other sources of generation of waste related to various human activities occurring at all different types of government and non-government or private establishments.

Commercial Waste Commercial waste refers to waste from commerce or commercial enterprises. With the advancement of modern cities, industries, and automobiles, commercial enterprises routinely generate large amounts of waste. This includes food, disposable medical products, textiles, and more. Garbage and waste from restaurants, hotels, markets, or offices are all commercial waste. Industrial waste and household waste are not included in this category. Paper, food, plastic, glass, tissue, and even toxins are examples of commercial waste. The roadside shop owners in most of the cities and towns in India discard their leftover packaging material comprising mostly plastics and cardboard boxes in front of their shops every night before they close their shops. Next morning, you can see heaps of this ‘dry’ waste in front of every shop along the roads or by-lanes. Schools and colleges are also the generators of commercial waste.


Agricultural Waste

Agricultural waste refers to waste generated due to agricultural activities such as horticulture, raising, maintaining and managing livestock, growing and harvesting the crops and vegetables etc. It includes crop residues like paddy stubble, dried stems and straws as post-harvest residues of variety of crops such as wheat, jowar, bajara, soyabean etc., bagasse from sugarcane, weeds and cattle waste. Leftover residues of synthetic pesticides are the most harmful component of agricultural waste. It not only kills harmful organisms but also kills helpful microorganisms: Pesticides contaminate soil and water and enter our food chain. Similarly, leftover residues of synthetic fertilizers applied to the crops to ensure better yield also become waste after their application.


Industrial Waste

The waste from manufacturing and processing industries such as chemical plants, cement factories, power plants, textile industries, food processing industries, and petroleum industries is known as Industrial Waste. Industrial waste is generally produced in the form of solids, liquids, or gases. But when we talk about industrial waste, it is usually solid. Sources of industrial waste are power plants, metal processing industries, cement factories, steel manufacturing industries, leather product units, food packaging, chemicals, transportation equipment, resins, plastics, and paper. Even water treatment plants produce industrial waste. It also includes harmful chemicals, plastics, demolition materials, fly ash from thermal power plants, packaging and other hazardous materials. Industrial sludge contains toxic compounds such as heavy metals that are harmful to the environment.

Mining waste

Waste is generated at several stages of the mining process and throughout the life of a mine, from exploration (drilling) to mine closure. Several types of waste are generated in a mine. This includes a variety of materials like tailings, mining water, waste rock, sludge, geosynthetics etc.

(The writer is an environment specialist. Views personal)

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