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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.

Stolen Childhood

Correspondent
Nov 20, 2025
2 min read

The recent rape and murder of a three-year-old girl in Malegaon in Nashik district is a crime so horrific that it numbs the senses. A toddler stepped out to play near her home in Dongarlare village; within three hours she was lured away with a piece of chocolate, assaulted and killed, her small body dumped in the bushes near a mobile tower. While her family is obviously, the outrage has spread across Maharashtra as the state once more confronts its inability to shield its youngest and most vulnerable.


The sequence is tragically familiar. Around six in the evening, the child was noticed missing. Within an hour, her family alerted the police. Her playmates, the only witnesses, revealed that a 24-year-old construction worker from the same village had enticed her with chocolates. Acting on this information, the police swiftly tracked down the accused, who allegedly confessed during interrogation. Soon after, the girl’s body was recovered. The accused is now in custody, with investigations ongoing.


Swift action is welcome, but it does not mask the deeper institutional rot. Maharashtra, despite its claims of administrative excellence, remains unable to protect children from predatory violence. The state’s child-safety systems especially in rural districts are weak, fragmented and reactive. Most villages lack adequate lighting, community vigilance mechanisms or basic awareness programmes for parents and children. Families rely on social cohesion and informal neighbourhood supervision, a fragile safeguard that crumbles instantly when confronted with malice.


The Malegaon tragedy thus exposes a longstanding contradiction in India. While laws such as the POCSO Act are among the world’s strictest on paper, they falter in practice. Cases of child rape continue to rise; convictions remain abysmally low. Fast-track courts are anything but fast. Forensic delays, uneven policing standards and poor inter-agency coordination routinely weaken cases before they reach the trial stage. This failure is a moral one, and not just administrative.


Maharashtra’s ruling alliance, the Mahayuti, came to power promising a sterner hand on law and order. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, as the State’s Home Minister, has often positioned himself as the custodian of Maharashtra’s internal security and the architect of a more efficient policing system. Unfortunately, at the moment, this perception is dismal.


It appears that the system bends for the powerful, stalls when confronted with theinconvenient, and collapses entirely for those without influence. This is why the Malegaon case demands more than formulaic assurances. It requires Fadnavis and the Mahayuti government to demonstrate that the state still retains the moral authority to deliver justice. They must ensure that investigators receive the resources they need, that lapses are punished, and that the trial proceeds on an accelerated timeline. Anything less risks further eroding public trust in the institutions meant to protect the vulnerable.


A society is judged not by how loudly it condemns barbarism, but by how effectively it prevents and prosecutes it. Maharashtra now stands at that test.

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