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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.

When Machines Masquerade as Scientists

Writer: Dr. Kishore Paknikar
Dr. Kishore Paknikar
Apr 2
4 min read

Updated: Apr 2

Two recent developments in scientific publishing should worry us. In one case, AI-generated inputs were found in peer review, leading to the rejection of papers. In another, an AI-written paper successfully passed peer review. Together, these highlight a deeper shift in how science is now created and assessed.


For the first time, AI is not just aiding science on the fringes. It is now involved in the entire scientific process, from writing to evaluation.


There is a fundamental question we need to ask now. For decades, we have relied on printed words, especially in scientific journals. That reliance assumes that what appears in print has undergone careful human review. Is that assumption still valid?


System Under Strain


Science has always relied on a human-centered process. A researcher identifies a problem, designs an approach, analyzes results, and presents findings. Peer reviewers assess the work using their knowledge and judgment. The strength of this system comes from human thinking, interpretation, and accountability.


That foundation is now shifting. AI tools can generate structured papers, summarize literature, and build convincing arguments. Meanwhile, reviewers are starting to rely on AI to read and evaluate manuscripts, often due to time and volume pressures. There are even reports of hidden instructions embedded in papers to sway AI-assisted reviews.


Now, both writing and reviewing are influenced by the same tools. Independent judgment, inevitably, diminishes.


The scope of science was already growing. Global publication output has exceeded about 2.5 million papers annually. Peer review is strained, with limited time and increasing expectations. AI shifts this balance significantly. Tasks that once took weeks can now be completed in hours, causing a sharp increase in submissions.


This shift is not only about speed. It is reshaping the system’s behaviour. No reviewer today has the time to read everything, and AI is widening that gap. It is compressing the scientific process itself. Steps that once demanded depth are shortened and sometimes bypassed.


This opens the door to a kind of ‘synthetic science.’ Here, the entire cycle of research, from conceptualisation and experimental design to methodology, results, discussion and conclusions, unfolds entirely within the digital world. Data are simulated, experiments are virtual, and interpretations may never be grounded in direct observation. The concern is not the use of digital tools, but the risk that such fully synthetic outputs begin to resemble validated science and are accepted without rigorous real-world verification.


This leads to what can be called the ‘flooding effect in science.’ where production outpaces the system’s capacity to evaluate carefully.


The most important shift is from truth to plausibility. AI-generated papers are well written, logically structured and technically convincing. They resemble good science. However, evidence shows that such content can include incorrect references, unsupported claims, or shallow reasoning that is not immediately visible.


Peer review was designed to examine reasoning and evidence. It was not designed to detect machine-generated coherence.



At the centre of this issue is a simple constraint. Human attention is finite, while AI can generate knowledge at scale. This creates the ‘attention bottleneck in science’ where the limiting factor is evaluation rather than production.


As this bottleneck tightens, strong work can be missed, while well-presented but weak work gains visibility which can potentially shape research directions in unintended ways.


If this continues, the consequences will extend beyond academia. Science underpins medicine, engineering, policy, and environmental decisions. If trust in scientific literature weakens, decision-making becomes uncertain. Regulators hesitate, industries second-guess evidence, and public confidence erodes. In such a situation, identifying reliable knowledge becomes extremely difficult.


Loss of trust in science is far more than a mere technical issue; it is a societal risk. It is therefore necessary to restate a basic principle. Science is not a text production process. It is a judgment process. If this distinction weakens, output may rise, but understanding will not.


Practical Response

This situation requires a clear and practical response. Journals should mandate explicit disclosure of AI use in writing and review so that readers are aware of what they are evaluating. Submissions should also go through automated citation and data checks to identify fabricated or inconsistent references before peer review.


Peer review needs to be strengthened. Reviewers should confirm that their evaluation reflects independent judgment, not unverified AI output. A simple “human-reviewed and verified” statement can restore accountability.


Academic evaluation systems should shift focus from counting publications to recognizing originality, depth, and reproducibility. Dedicated space for replication and validation studies must be established, as these are crucial for credibility but are currently undervalued.


Researcher training must also evolve. Merely using AI is not enough. Scientists need to learn to question, verify, and challenge AI-generated outputs. The aim should be to use AI to boost thinking, not replace it. Journals might even consider an “AI involvement score” to show how much machine help was used in a paper.


The implications may extend beyond publishing. As AI systems merge with robotics and humanoid platforms, knowledge could increasingly lead to automated actions in healthcare, manufacturing, and environmental systems. If the foundational science is weak, automated decisions might amplify errors on a large scale. The risk is no longer limited to wrong conclusions; it now includes wrong actions.


Science has adapted to change many times. However, this shift is different because it influences how knowledge is judged, not just how it is created. We are entering a phase where knowledge can be produced at unprecedented speed, but understanding may not keep up.


So, we come back to the fundamental question. If printed words can now be created, reviewed, and accepted with minimal human involvement, what exactly are we trusting?


Machines can produce text quickly and accurately. However, meaning, judgment, and responsibility stay firmly with humans. That distinction needs to be maintained.


If we preserve it, AI becomes a powerful ally in advancing science. If we blur it, the consequences will not seem like failure but as a gradual erosion. Everything may still look correct, yet something essential will be missing.


(The writer is an ANRF Prime Minister Professor at COEP Technological University, Pune; former Director of the Agharkar Research Institute, Pune; and former Visiting Professor at IIT Bombay. Views personal).

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