Maratha battleground

Whether by accident or design, Maharashtra played host to the prime minister and the leader of the Opposition on Thursday. The fact that it also happened to be April Fool’s day seemed to have tickled the prime minister somewhat and with customary wit he used it to good effect while berating the Congress-NCP alliance. On her part, Sonia Gandhi — sharing the dais for the first time in almost five years with her one-time bete noire, NCP supremo Sharad Pawar — launched into a diatribe against the “selfish” government at the Centre. There is, of course, good reason why Maharashtra is big in every politician’s line of vision. It is the second most important state in the country, after Uttar Pradesh, with no less than 48 parliamentary seats, and it can make or unmake a coalition government at the Centre.

The irony is that this formidable political power that the state represents has rarely been employed for the welfare of its people. Political parties across the board — from the Congress, to the NCP, to the Shiv Sena to the BJP — have abjectly failed it. That, in fact, is the real April Fool’s joke. Elections bring every political party crawling to its doorstep — apart from the ones nurtured within it — but the very fact that this state with its enormous wealth has the greatest developmental disparities in the country, is comment enough of the performance of its rulers. Today Maharashtra, despite having the highest GDP in the country, has drought blighting large swathes; tribal communities living just a few score miles from a powerhouse called Mumbai continue to register the most damning infant mortality and child malnutrition levels and water tables in the prosperous sugar belt of the state are falling so drastically as to cast a shadow on the future.

How have the state’s political parties responded to this challenge? By a combination of the most narrow caste-based politics and scams of every description. Interesting isn’t it that each one of them had a similar view on the James Laine issue. An artificial controversy was created in order to supposedly uphold Shivaji Maharaj’s honour. So much so that Prime Minister Vajpayee first condemned the ban on James Laine’s book and then endorsed it, while Sonia Gandhi dare not even comment on it for fear of bringing her government in the state crashing down. The reason for this is not far to seek. The Maratha-Kunbis account for one-third of the population and are a valuable votebank. Interesting, too, is the fact that the Telgi scam, which has deeply tainted the Congress-NCP government in the state, doesn’t quite leave the Shiv Sena-BJP lot as pure as driven snow either. Maharashtra, quite obviously, deserves more than warmed up diatribes and empty promises this poll season.