Staying Relevant


The twists and turns, betrayals and horse-trading leading to Uddhav Thackeray becoming Chief Minister of Maharashtra are worthy of a face-paced novel or political thriller. Santosh Desai sums it up perfectly:
“The real lesson from Maharashtra is not about any one political party’s victory or defeat… Everyone’s greed and opportunism have helped cancel out everyone’s else’s greed and opportunism.”

Sharad Pawar’s NCP comes off as the one on whom the least criticism can be hurled. The Congress, on the other hand?
“The Congress’ claims about its commitment to secularism lie in tatters. In the current context, its attempt to position itself as a counterpoint to the BJP is rendered laughable given its willingness to partner a party that has historically been to the right of the BJP.”

Wait a minute. Didn’t the Shiv Sena say it was abandoning its Hindutva agenda, “betrayed its long-time alliance partner but showed a willingness to move beyond its core ideological position in order to win power”? The part about grabbing power is certainly true, but is/can the Shiv Sena really going to abandon its Hindutva agenda?

Shekhar Gupta, on his YouTube video, says it’s possible though by no means a certainty. Why? Aren’t politicians known to say whatever suits the hour? Yes, Gupta agrees, but this may well have been a crucial fork in the road for the Shiv Sena. Do they stick to their Hindutva agenda, and pay second fiddle to the BJP? Or do they abandon the Hindutva agenda to become a part of the Opposition alliance, not just now in Maharashtra but also in the next national elections? Being part of the NDA when the BJP can form a majority on its own at the Center doesn’t give the Shiv Sena any leverage. But being part of an Opposition coalition may well give them significant clout if they came to power in 2024. As Gupta says, in politics, staying relevant can trump any ideology.

Staying relevant. That may also explain why the Congress was willing to tie up with the Shiv Sena. While the risks of the Shiv Sena going back to Hindutva are high, and the damage to the Congress’ own vote bank of allying with the Shiv Sena could be significant, is the Congress now painted into a corner where staying relevant trumps its own left-of-center ideology?

And this is why Gupta is not as pessimistic as most on the viability of the Maharashtra government. He believes the unifying theme for all 3 parties is not just naked power and greed (yes, it is also that), but the longer term theme of (that phrase again) staying relevant.

Gupta wonders if the BJP has become the new Congress. No, not as a corrupt party, not as a minority appeaser, not as a dynastic party. Rather he muses if the BJP is the new Congress from the one-party-dominates-the-country perspective. And just as a few decades back, the Congress dominance led to unlikely bed-fellows like the Jan Sangh and the Left becoming allies, is Maharashtra a sign of everyone being forced to gang up against the BJP today, not because it is “communal” but because it is so utterly dominant?

It’s a certainly an interesting possibility, which is why Gupta titles his video as “Maharashtra marks the biggest shift in national politics since Modi’s rise in 2014”.

Comments

  1. Ramiah KumarDecember 2, 2019 at 12:25 PM

    Good presentation.

    This blog writer has mastered the art of presenting through "what other/s said or discussed" in a way that the flow is nevertheless cogent and smooth. :-)

    As usual, I find the finish well made too. To quote: << It’s a certainly an interesting possibility, which is why Gupta titles his video as “Maharashtra marks the biggest shift in national politics since Modi’s rise in 2014”. >> Yes, of course - I can add.

    My conviction is, in writing, finishing needs to be more artful and focused than the rest!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Student of the Year

Image
As a toddler, my daughter loved Alia Bhatt’s songs, esp. the ones from Student of the Year . (That movie did have many good songs and well-choreographed dances). Fast forward to present day, when she is 12 yo. She rarely watches Hindi movies now, but one of the few ones she likes of late, Raja aur Rani ki Prem Kahani has, yes, Alia Bhatt.   If I had any hopes that there was anything to be read in the name of her toddler-time favorite ( Student of the Year ), they have been dashed. Our conversations come exam time are perfectly captured by this photo and its caption: In fact, the pic below captures how she and I look at her answer sheets – me intently, she with an expression of “It’s over, so why are you even looking at it?”   Of late, we pull her leg and tell her that she isn’t showing any signs of academic prowess, she’d better find a rich guy to marry. Some time later, she showed us this meme on the Internet: “Me No Study, Me No Care Me Go Marry Millionaire If He Die
Read more

Animal Senses #7: Touch and Remote Touch

Instinctively, we think touch is based on contact. Not entirely true, explains Ed Yong in Immense World – there’s a more important aspect than contact: “These incredible feats are possible through movement. If you rest a fingertip upon a surface, you can get only a limited idea of its features. But as soon you’re allowed to move, everything changes. Hardness becomes apparent with a press. Textures resolve at a stroke.” As you run your fingers over a surface, they hit the tiny peaks and troughs and set off vibrations in the mechanoreceptors at their tips.   At the tip of its snout, the star-nosed mole has many pairs of hairless appendages. It uses them to touch things around itself. Alive or dead? Food or ignore? It does these movements at an insane speed. In the time it takes to blink our eyes, the star-nosed mole can probe, identify and swallow its food. “Light may be the fastest thing in the universe, but light sensors have their limits, and the star-nosed mole’s sense of
Read more

The Retort of the "Luxury Person"

Image
Coming up with biting and witty retorts. It’s something we dream of, but rarely manage to pull off. Worse, the more we stew over the offending remark, the more likely we are to come up with that dream retort, as Calvin ruefully points out: During our last holiday at the Taj Resort, seeing my wife carrying towels to our poolside chairs, one of the kids there mistook her for a member of the staff and asked for a towel. When my wife narrated this to us, I did not imagine that my 8 yo daughter would come up with her own retort. But a day later, my daughter recapped the incident, an incident that didn’t even involve her in the first place , and said, “You know what I’d have told that kid who asked for the towel?”. And without waiting for an answer, she told us anyway: “I don’t work here. I too am a luxury person who is living at this resort. Go get your own towel.” We were highly amused by the phrase she had coined: “luxury person”. It certainly captures the kind of holid
Read more