Mutiny over the bounty

There is nothing new about a few disappointed and doughty ticket-seekers spurning the mother party and choosing to fight elections as independents or as candidates of smaller parties. But they have always numbered just a handful. What is new about the current electoral scene in Maharashtra is the sheer extent of the rebellion. All the major political parties in the state have had to deal with the phenomenon of the bandkhors (mutineers).

Of course, there are reasons why Maharashtra, specifically, has been the site of such mass disaffection. The strong leaders of yesteryear have either disappeared from the scene or find themselves today as ailing patriarchs presiding over what is best described as teeming chaos. The loosening ties of leadership not only encourages the ambitious within party ranks to make their personal bids for power, it also introduces laxity into the overarching authority of the party. Since the early nineties, Maharashtra has had a fairly stable bipolar polity, with the Congress arraigned against the Shiv Sena/BJP. But the shrinking of the once overwhelming Congress presence in the state — which began with the seismic events of ’92-’93, continued with the emergence of Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party and witnessed the Congress/NCP pre-poll alliance of this election — has created conditions for the emergence of new political forces in the state. This in turn has led many political players, denied the opportunity to participate as official candidates, to search for new relevance in a changed political scenario.

What you have then is a dissipation of party authority coupled with the new go-it-alone confidence of the political freelancer, who having benefitted personally from political power is now loathe to embrace oblivion. The rebellion is ultimately a mutiny over the bounty that political power brings in its wake. Maharashtra, as one of the most prosperous states in the country, may well have ushered in a new trend in Indian politics.