“In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens you can bet it was planned that way.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Maha-Chaos
Maharashtra politics remains a mystery with a floor test appearing to be the only solution to end the impasse. It is indeed a rare sight to catch the newspapers napping when most of them had declared Sena’s Pramukh Uddhav Thackeray to be the next chief minister of Maharashtra only to watch the hurried swearing in of Devendra Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar on Saturday morning.
After the Shivsena-NCP-Congress (Maha-Vikas Aghadi) alliance raised a hue and cry about the BJP’s midnight play for Maharashtra’s government on Saturday, the Supreme Court ordered a floor test to be held on Wednesday, 27 November.
However, even as both sides, BJP-Ajit Pawar and the Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress alliance claimed to have larger numbers than the other, NCP-defector-turned-BJP ally, Ajit Pawar, has announced his resignation as Maharashtra’s deputy chief minister.
Soon after this news, Devendra Fadnavis, who was sworn in as chief minister in an early morning ceremony at the Governor’s residence around 7 am on 23 November, Saturday, has also announced his resignation.
Whose Gain Whose Loss?
The real lesson from Maharashtra is not about any one political party’s victory or defeat, but about the state of politics in the country and what it has done to all of us. Maharashtra exposes the fact as to how the practice of politics has corrupted everything and everyone that it has touched. No one is left with any right to speak. Everyone’s greed and opportunism have helped to cancel out everyone else’s greed and opportunism.
The language surrounding these episodes casts Amit Shah as the mastermind and Pawar as the ‘old fox’. Double-crosses are a source of delight. Subversion of the Constitution is thought of as a clever gambit. The absence of any real outrage in any quarter is a sign of how far we have come. What happened in Goa, Karnataka, Haryana and Maharashtra, just to cite a few recent instances, are seen as part of a game, one which must be played without any set of rules. This is sport, cinema, theatre, not real life.
And everyone is infected. The liberal commentators who suddenly suspended their otherwise visceral dislike for the Shiv Sena and urged the Congress to act quickly to seal the deal, are not that different from the BJP supporters who on the one hand, object to the Shiv Sena’s actions on grounds of betraying the mandate of the people and on the other, rejoice when their party ties up with those they campaigned against as being ‘naturally corrupt’. They also have no problems when politicians are widely known to be corrupt magically turn clean when they join the BJP.
Ajit Pawar is only safeguarding his future by getting a get-out-of-jail-card. Shiv Sena is only using the leverage it has to grab power, mindful that this opportunity may not come again. The Congress is doing whatever it can to prevent the BJP from coming to power. The BJP would be foolish not to use all its resources to retain power in an important state. For the liberals, any action that can help stop the BJP juggernaut is seen as legitimate, for how do you fight such a dominant force without mirroring its methods.
But what’s in the end?
What the bitter truth is we don’t really care which party promise what? Who supported whom and who was once a bitter enemy?
This has brought us to political juncture where the only ‘ism’ that matters to all is opportunism of grabbing power and neither secularism nor nationalism.
Thank you!
Khush T & Manan S
APOLITICAL DIPLOMACY 