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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.

Trade Match

Correspondent
Jul 25, 2025
2 min read

Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Keir Starmer have shaken hands on a long-anticipated trade deal between India and Britain. It was not the moment many had predicted — a Labour leader celebrating a free trade agreement (FTA) that had eluded his Conservative predecessors for nearly three years.


The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), as it is formally known, promises to boost bilateral trade by $34 billion annually. India’s textiles, marine products, and engineering goods will gain near-total tariff-free access to British markets. Provisions for services, digital trade and skilled mobility, though modest, signal a willingness to deepen ties beyond goods.


That it fell to Starmer to ink the deal is as much a twist of political timing as it is a commentary on Britain’s evolving posture abroad. Negotiations that had begun under Boris Johnson had slogged on through the premierships of Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. The latter, himself of Indian heritage, was widely expected to deliver the deal and did in fact bring the process close to conclusion. But internal pressures over immigration and looming elections froze political momentum. Labour’s clean electoral sweep, coupled with Starmer’s desire to project global seriousness, offered just enough clearance to push the pact over the line.


Both sides emerge with wins. The UK secured headline access for its whisky industry as India is the world’s largest whisky market by volume, and established a precedent-setting chapter on financial services. New Delhi agreed that British firms would not face more restrictions than Indian companies, a first for India in any trade pact. London, in turn, made some concessions on professional mobility, opening a visa route previously closed to Indian temporary workers.


For India, the gains are broader and potentially deeper. Around 99 percent of Indian exports will face zero tariffs under the deal. Agri-exports will benefit from simplified certification rules and streamlined technical barriers. Textiles and garments, long disadvantaged against rivals like Bangladesh and Cambodia who already enjoy duty-free access, will now compete on level terms in the UK’s $27 billion market. The engineering sector could double exports to the UK by 2030. Pharmaceuticals, electronics, marine products and software services stand to gain significantly.


Notably, the deal tiptoes around domestic sensitivities. India has shielded its dairy, poultry, and edible oil sectors from British imports, while the UK has kept sugar, milled rice and some animal products under existing tariffs. Labour has been careful to emphasise that the pact will not lead to wider immigration or permanent settlement pathways. Whether these guardrails hold remains to be seen.


CETA is unlikely to revolutionise trade flows overnight. India’s total goods exports to the UK still trail behind those to the UAE and the US. But symbolically, the agreement matters. It marks Britain’s most substantive FTA with a non-Western power post-Brexit. It anchors India more firmly into the UK’s Indo-Pacific trade vision. And it positions both countries — former coloniser and colony — not as supplicant and patron, but as strategic equals seeking mutual advantage.

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