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.

The Oxford of the East is bursting at the seams

Sneha Johari

Feb 20, 2025

4 min read

Updated: Feb 21, 2025

Once a veritable pensioner’s paradise, Pune has regressed into a decaying metropolis gasping under the weight of its own progress.

It is a rare event when a 47-year-old American is the cause of outrage amongst Indians, but that’s what happened after entrepreneur Bryan Johnson left billionaire Nikhil Kamath’s podcast midway through. Exposed to an AQI of 130, Johnson is visibly uncomfortable and equates it to “smoking 3.4 cigarettes for 24 hours of exposure”.

Indians, who are unfortunately accustomed to much worse weather, will not bat an eyelid, and some may even think of 130 as a good air day. I am guilty of this normalisation myself when, once upon a time, I joked that I would need to plug my lungs to the nearest exhaust pipe to make them feel alive when I was overseas surrounded by clear air, the AQI of which never went beyond 4. This is how immune we have become to poor air quality, but our immune systems are crying inside.

The health toll of polluted air has been documented to death by being linked to inflammation, immunosuppression, strokes, COPD, cancer and even type 2 diabetes. In cities like Pune, where construction dust, traffic fumes and burning garbage shroud the skyline, residents inhale a perpetual haze of fine particles with little choice but to adapt.

To top that crown jewel, Pune now ranks fourth in a TomTom Traffic Index survey of 500 cities across 62 countries measuring traffic congestion, leading to an average travel time of more than 30 minutes per 10 kms in the city centre. Commuters are losing hundreds of hours stuck in traffic annually.

What, then, is the root of this urban malaise? Pinning it solely on overpopulation and the influx of migrant workers - a favorite refrain among Pune’s so-called original residents - may offer a convenient scapegoat, but it obscures a far more troubling and complex reality.

Once known as the ‘pensioner’s paradise,’ Pune’s employability value skyrocketed after it transformed itself into an IT hub, following in the footsteps of the city’s automobile industry. IT parks, Special Economic Zones, gated housing societies and rapid development in the suburbs contributed heavily to its attractiveness.

The pandemic, with its surge in digital adoption, sent companies into a hiring frenzy, swelling Pune’s workforce almost overnight. But as the world reopened and the demand for online services waned, the layoffs came just as swiftly. Yet those who lost their jobs did not simply pack up and leave. Many stayed, adding to a city already bursting at the seams.

7.2 million - that’s how many vehicles ply on Pune’s roads (including Pimpri Chinchwad) as of last year. That’s nearly as many people as live in the city now, if not more. While Pune’s estimated population is 7.3 million, it feels more like 10 million, thanks to its roads choked with metal tins. When commuting, if one looks around in any direction, they’re likely to see a common sight: a single person in each car. Imagine the space taken up by three cars consecutively, carrying three people, or even six, if we’re lucky. That’s how much space a bus would take carrying at least 40 people. That aside, each car driver brings their own brand of lawlessness on the street, adding to the potent cocktail of road rage, splintered by the poor state of the roads and the hurry to get somewhere.

Pune’s crumbling public infrastructure has been visible to its residents, new or old, for at least a decade now. Nine years ago, work for the Pune Metro began, and the face of the city has not been the same ever since. If we keep aside the overpopulation for a minute, the municipal corporation’s inability to trace the source of the recent ‘man-made’ GBS outbreak should make anyone shift in their seats. There aren’t enough public transport buses to cater to the city’s population, and bus drivers call the shots on the road, paying no heed to traffic signals nor public safety.

The rise of cheap mobile internet plans, access to information and an explosion of food delivery and quick commerce platforms has facilitated employment amongst low-income families. Dressed in company-branded uniforms, these gig workers operate under tremendous pressure, often flouting traffic rules in order to get to their destination in a stipulated and challenging period of time. While transportation companies claim to train their drivers about local rules and etiquette, there is a blatant disregard for traffic rules, putting the lives of others in danger.

This leads me to think aloud a chicken-and-egg problem: did driver aggression come before asphyxiating traffic or vice versa? I asked ChatGPT “why do people drive like maniacs in Pune?” to which it reasoned:

Traffic density = congestion = impatience and aggressive driving
Blatant disregard for traffic rules
Lax law enforcement
Pathetic road conditions
Newcomers or visitors from other cities might struggle to adjust to the local driving culture, where honking, lane-switching, and overtaking are more common.

Shocker, right? Pune is certainly not a leaf out of model cities seen in a developed nation, but it can become the paradise it once was, leading the way for other Indian cities to follow.

(The author is an independent journalist with a keen interest in environmental issues and urban ecology.)

The BJP’s Ganesha Gambit

The Oxford of the East is bursting at the seams

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