In Mahatma Gandhi’s conception of India as a nation of ‘Village Republics’ (Gram Swaraj), the panchayat had the identical prestige as parliament. Sadly, that is not how democracy evolved in independent India. Panchayats (self-government bodies at the village level) had been progressively disempowered. Power got increasingly centralized at larger levels. Now, in Narendra Modi’s government, we have witnessed unprecedented concentration of energy at the centre. Even state governments are complaining that the powers granted to them beneath the constitution have been usurped by an “imperial” centre.Yet, even in this changed situation, 1 aspect of electoral democracy – namely, “all politics is local” – remains pretty intact. Hence, the salience of Gram Panchayat elections can not be overlooked. With 65 % of India’s population nonetheless in rural locations, village-level politics continue to be a yardstick – albeit not the sole yardstick – for assessing political trends in states. By no implies do panchayat elections have any direct bearing on national politics. After all, India is as well vast and diverse. Nevertheless, their influence on the politics of a big Indian state occasionally reveals capabilities that may possibly have national significance.Viewed from this viewpoint, the final results of the not too long ago-concluded panchayat elections in Maharashtra have shown that Narendra Modi’s BJP can be defeated by a cohesive ‘Maha-Gathbandhan’ (a large, multi-party alliance). Nearly half of the village panchayats (14,234 out of 29,700) in the state’s 34 districts voted on January 15. The BJP has emerged as the party with the biggest quantity of wins – 3,300-plus. However, remarkably, the combined wins of the ‘Maha Vikas Aghadi’ (the Marathi word for ‘Maha-Gathbandhan’, which became nationally popular soon after the keenly-fought assembly elections in Bihar in November final year) are practically 3 occasions larger than the BJP’s. The Shiv Sena, which heads the 3-party coalition in the state, with Uddhav Thackerary as the Chief Minister, has emerged as the second-biggest party with practically 3,000 wins, closely followed by Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). Even even though the Congress, the third party in the coalition, has come fourth, its efficiency (2,200+ wins) is not unsatisfactory. (The numbers are somewhat imprecise simply because the candidates in panchayat elections can not have official symbols of their political parties. As a outcome, each and every party tends to make exaggerated claims about its wins.) Notably, the BJP has been defeated in the native villages of its state president Chandrakant Patil and its former president and union minister Raosaheb Danve.Sharad Pawar and Uddhav Thackeray (File photo)The significance of these numbers lies in the reality that a pretty substantial section of the rural population of Maharashtra has endorsed the Thackeray-led coalition government. They also show that the Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress have been in a position to work with each other at the grassroots level, by no implies an quick feat, exactly where cadre of even parties in alliance generally clashed against each and every other. After all, the Sena was a sturdy political and ideological ally of the BJP for 35 years prior to parting approaches in 2019. As a spirited advocate of ‘Hindutva’, it was also an ideological foe of the Congress and its offshoot, Pawar’s NCP. So lengthy as the BJP was led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee and LK Advani, neither Uddhav Thackeray nor his late father Balasaheb Thackeray had any big challenges with the BJP as senior political companion on a national level. The BJP, as well, maintained very good relations with the Sena, deciding on to be its junior companion in state politics.Cracks created in the saffron alliance when the BJP, beneath the leadership of Modi and Amit Shah, decided, quickly soon after its spectacular victory in the 2014 parliamentary elections, to weaken the Sena and turn out to be the Number 1 party in Maharashtra. The ugly culmination of this quarrel was the BJP’s refusal to give the Chief Minister’s post to the Sena soon after the 2019 assembly elections which the two parties had fought with each other to win a majority of seats. The Sena, which had won fewer seats (56, as against the BJP’s 105), claimed that the BJP had betrayed a pre-poll assurance on this score. Unable to type the government with the Sena’s assistance, the BJP attempted to type the government by attempting a split in Pawar’s party. The ploy failed, but not prior to the Modi government entirely discrediting itself in a murky midnight energy-grab scandal with the aid of the state’s pliant governor, Bhagat Singh Koshiyari, a former senior BJP functionary. The failure of this trick led to the unlikely birth of a new 3-party ‘Maha-Gathbandhan’ government led by Uddhav Thackeray.Last week’s panchayat elections posed the very first big political test to this coalition considering that it took charge of Maharashtra, and Thackeray and his new partners have won it convincingly. Their efficiency has also punctured the BJP’s propaganda that the coalition is each illegitimate and unstable. For many months prior to these elections, BJP circles had been also floating stories about the “imminent toppling” of the government. Any misadventure of this sort would certainly boomerang on the BJP. Already, its lurid work, with the aid of pliable Television channels, to besmirch Thackeray’s government in the case pertaining to the suicide of Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput, has boomeranged.Uddhav Thackeray A big cause for the stability of the coalition government is Uddhav’s surprisingly mature leadership, along with the aid and guidance he has received from Pawar, the most astute octogenarian politician in Maharashtra. Uddhav has faced quite a few troubles in the 14 months of his chief ministership. The severest of these challenges has been the COVID-19 pandemic. Even even though the state machinery’s handling of it has not been outstanding, the Chief Minister has endeared himself to the people today as a sensitive, responsive and difficult-working leader. He has constructed cordial relations with his coalition colleagues in the NCP and Congress, quite a few of whom are senior to him in age and practical experience.Quite uncharacteristically, Saamana, the Shiv Sena’s feisty official newspaper, has been frequently heaping praise on Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. In an editorial two weeks ago it wrote: “Those in power in Delhi fear Rahul Gandhi. Otherwise, government campaigns to discredit the Gandhi family would not have been carried out. A dictator is afraid even if one man is against him, and if this lone warrior is honest, the fear increases hundredfold. The fear of Rahul Gandhi is that, hundred-fold.” Saamna’s executive editor, Sanjay Raut, who is Uddhav’s trusted colleague and the Sena’s most effective-recognized critic of Prime Minister Modi, has combatively held aloft the banner of unity of non-BJP parties.The BJP beneath Modi and Shah has generally boasted that it is effectively on its way to becoming India’s dominant party in each and every state – from “Panchayat to Parliament”. It surely occupies the Number 1 position at the Centre and in quite a few states – such as at the panchayat level, as the current final results in Maharashtra have shown. However, Uddhav Thackeray has shown that a robust ‘Maha-Gathbandhan’ of all non-BJP parties at the national level can turn out to be a credible option in 2024.(The writer was an aide to India’s former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.)Disclaimer: The opinions expressed inside this report are the private opinions of the author. The information and opinions appearing in the report do not reflect the views of and does not assume any duty or liability for the identical.
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