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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.

The Founder’s Luxury Blindspot

Writer: Divyaa Advaani 
Divyaa Advaani 
Feb 6
3 min read

In every market today, there are businesses that compete on price, and then there are businesses that command value. The difference is rarely the product alone. More often, it is perception. Luxury brands have understood this for decades, yet many founders continue to ignore the very principles that make premium positioning possible.


Luxury is not a logo. It is not packaging. It is not even the price tag. Luxury is engineered perception.


The world’s most iconic luxury brands do not leave trust to chance. They do not hope customers will “eventually understand.” They design every detail to communicate status, consistency, and desirability long before a single conversation begins. Founders, on the other hand, often rely on effort as their marketing strategy. They believe that if the work is strong, the market will notice. If the service is excellent, clients will talk. If the business is successful, credibility will follow.


But luxury brands know something founders often overlook: excellence is expected. Perception is what differentiates.


A luxury customer does not buy only a product. They buy a feeling. A signal. An identity. They buy the experience of being associated with something rare, intentional, and elevated.


Founders may build exceptional companies, but still present themselves in ways that feel ordinary. Their business may be premium, yet their personal presence, communication, online identity, and client experience remain inconsistent.


Luxury brands never allow this mismatch. They understand that premium perception is built through alignment. Every touchpoint — the tone of voice, the visual identity, the behaviour of the representatives, the way a customer is treated — reinforces the same message: this is valuable.


This is where personal branding becomes the founder’s most underutilised asset. A founder’s personal brand is the human equivalent of a luxury label. It is what people feel before they sign the contract. It is what they assume about your standards before they experience your service. It is what makes someone trust your price without negotiating your worth. Luxury brands do not chase attention. They curate desire. Founders often do the opposite. They become overly accessible, overly explanatory, overly eager to prove value. Yet premium positioning is built through restraint, clarity, and confidence. The strongest brands do not convince. They signal. Consider how luxury brands handle consistency. They do not appear differently on different days. Their experience is predictable in the best way. Whether you walk into their store in Paris or Dubai, you know what to expect.


Many founders ignore this. Their website speaks one language, their social media speaks another, their personal presence speaks a third. The result is confusion — and confusion is the enemy of premium.


Luxury brands also understand the power of storytelling. They never sell features. They sell legacy. Craftsmanship. Meaning. They give the customer a narrative to belong to.


Founders, especially in traditional industries, hesitate to do this. They market the company but hide the person. They forget that people trust people before they trust institutions. A founder who communicates vision and values becomes a magnet. A founder who remains invisible becomes replaceable. The modern business landscape rewards those who are not only competent, but unforgettable.


Luxury brands remind us that premium is not about being expensive. It is about being intentional. About designing perception rather than leaving it to assumption. About ensuring that what you deliver matches what you signal.


For founders who want to scale into the next league, the question is no longer “Is my business good?” The question is: Does my presence reflect its value? Because the market does not pay more for effort. It pays more for clarity, confidence, and credibility. And those are not accidental. They are engineered.


If you are a founder or business owner who knows your work is premium but suspects your positioning is not yet matching it, it may be time to refine the personal brand that represents everything you have built.


You can book a free consultation call with me here: https://sprect.com/pro/divyaaadvaani


Not as a sales pitch, but as a conversation about building a brand that finally feels as high-value as the business behind it.


(The author is a personal branding expert. She has clients from 14+ countries.

Views personal.)

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