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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.

Tycoon who revamped an Indian conglomerate to a global might

Kailas Rajwadkar
Oct 11, 2024
2 min read

Updated: Oct 22, 2024

Tycoon

From working on the shop floor of Tata Steel in 1961 after graduating in architecture to becoming its chairman and later on the group chairman, the doyen of Indian industry -- Ratan Tata during his tenure grew the India-centric conglomerate – Tata Group into a global force to reckon with.


Before he joined the helm of affairs at the Tata group, its revenue was by and large coming from commodities, but he had the foresight to grow the group inorganically by acquiring global brands with Tata Tea, Tata Motors and Tata Steel acquiring Tetley, Jaguar Land Rover and Corus, respectively.


All of his inorganic initiatives bore fruit as close to 50 percent of Tata group’s revenue of USD 165 billion now come from global operations.


During his tenure as the group chairman from 1991-2012, the group exited ACC – the cement commodity business despite being profitable to pursue global acquisition while listing TCS in 2004 that fueled growth and derived dividends for the group’s philanthropic initiatives.


In 2008, he fulfilled his promise to offer the world’s cheapest car – Tata Nano at a price tag of Rs 1 lakh, affordable to the Indian middle class and a mark of innovation.


His vision about acquiring companies not only brought about his financial acumen with respect to large global brands and conglomerates, but also about investing in start-ups including Snapdeal, Paytm, Ola, Cardekho, FirstCry, Lenskart, Nestaway, Urban Ladder, Urban Company, Generic Aadhaar among several others.


Born in Mumbai in December 1937 and completing his primary schooling within the city, Ratan Tata was adopted into the Tata family.  He later enrolled in Cornell University from which he graduated with a degree in architecture in 1959.


“….he was a businessman for whom financial wealth and success was most useful when it was put to the service of the global community,” said industrialist Anand Mahindra in his tweet.


As a staunch supporter of education, healthcare and rural development, Ratan Tata – the philanthropist supported University of New South Wales faculty of engineering to develop capacitive deionization in order to provide quality water for challenging areas.


He funded several initiatives for genetics, biological and physical sciences to foster collaboration and innovation among researchers to address infectious diseases including gene editing stem cell therapy and the need for sustainable food sources.


Post retirement, he led a very modest life living in Colaba in South Mumbai with his two dogs – Tito (German Shepherd) and Tango (Golden Retriever) but continued to leave a lasting legacy as a corporate and philanthropic citizen.


In the year 2000, Ratan Tata was recognized with third highest civilian honour – Padma Bhushan and with second highest civilian honour Padma Vibhushan in 2008 as also with state civilian honour like Maharashtra Bhushan.


As renowned industrialist Harsh Goenka aptly puts it, “……a beacon of integrity, ethical leadership and philanthropy, who has imprinted an indelible mark on the world of business and beyond.”

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