To understand Sharad Pawar, one has to comprehend the convulsions Maharashtra has gone through in the last three decades. Whether in power or not, Pawar has remained at the heart of the state’s politics. But there is a slight change perceptible over the years. As long as Congress ideology and politics of power were in tandem, he was supreme. When he disassociated himself from Congress ideology (howsoever nebulous it may have been), he began to lose credibility — emerging merely as a “strongman”.In the past he inspired confidence, today his every move is seen to be cunning. It is this image makeover that led to a sort of confrontation with the finance ministry, and later with the PMO, when he threatened to boycott the visit to Vidarbha along with the prime minister. Finally he agreed to accompany Dr Manmohan Singh, apparently when his formula for Maharashtra farmers was considered. Whatever be the formula, it would not fully explain the nature of the crisis and how it evolved. For too long the state’s leadership has been fire-fighting, rather than looking at the cause for the frequent fires in rural Maharashtra.It is difficult to cite the exact point in time when Maharashtra’s peasantry entered a debt trap. The state has never really been agriculture friendly, but the “epidemic” of suicides in rural areas is a recent phenomenon. The Vidarbha region, which the prime minister visits this week, has been ground zero of this suicide wave — an estimated 500 cotton farmers have lost their lives in the last two years alone. Vidarbha has never been so miserable. Not that other parts of Maharashtra are happier. Marathwada, for instance, has seen over 150 suicides in the last few months.The question to ask is: when did this farmer, otherwise known for his tenacity, give up hope altogether? More important, what drove him to the wall? The insensitivity of the political class, complicated commerce, uncertain weather or an oppressive banking system that actually resembles the old moneylender? Today, the farmer is totally enslaved by institutions which were actually created to give him relief and help him prosper. Now even the sight of the bank or its employees sends a shiver down his spine. Earlier, the political structure in the village offered him protection. Today that structure threatens his existence.The community character of agriculture ended a long time ago, even before market forces and Sharad Joshi, the celebrated peasant leader, impacted the peasantry. In the ’70s, the peasant was liberated from the clutches of the moneylenders, thanks to nationalisation of banks and the 20-point programme. But some time in the ’90s, he found himself chained by the very cooperative banks created and promoted for him and even by him. These banks rapidly became political power centres in rural Maharashtra. Along with sugar cooperatives and the local political class, they formed a cartel of sorts in western Maharashtra. There was, however, no such cartelisation in Vidarbha, which has seen the most acute spate of suicides.In the first phase, the Congress political system was strengthened by the process of cartelisation. The Congress could consolidate its political power thanks only to this leader-chairman-panel nexus. The leader was a minister, the chairman headed a sugar factory or cooperative bank (or both) and the panel (in the sugar factory or in the bank) acted as henchmen, who controlled everything — local politics as well as institutions. At the apex of the cooperative banks was the Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank. Whoever controlled this bank controlled politics and also the agricultural economy of the state. But essentially this overall control was in the hands of the sugar and bank barons of western Maharashtra.Vidarbha, Marathwada and Konkan, the other three regions, became sort of colonies of the sugar empire. The so called backlog of development was because of this imbalance. Till the end of the ’80s this internal colonial structure worked. Thereafter widespread discontent in the less developed parts of Maharashtra began to manifest itself in politics.The first Machiavellian stroke Sharad Pawar delivered was to his own Congress(S) chief minister, Vasantdada Patil. Pawar formed a parallel front (an alliance known as the Progressive Democratic Front) with the then Janata Party. The new front destabilised the government, which was also a coalition of the Congress(S) and Congress(I). Though the Congress was split after Indira Gandhi’s defeat, both Congresses retained the essential character of the original party. Pawar’s front, however, brought in most of the opposition of the right and the left (socialists and the Jan Sangh who had dissolved themselves in the JP-led Janata Party).It is since then that the rural base of the Congress began fracturing. Pawar’s government was forced out in ’80, when Indira Gandhi came back to power and Yashwantrao Chavan, Pawar’s mentor, joined her. Pawar, however preferred to carry on with the party he had formed. It is only in ’86, two years after Rajiv Gandhi came to power, that he realised that there was no scope to come to power. So he joined the Congress under Rajiv. Within 18 months, he had manipulated the power structure to become chief minister again. However, he could not win Rajiv’s heart, and the loyalists, backed by Rajiv himself, tried to destabilise his chief ministership.The Gandhis never really trusted him, nor did he have any loyalty to them. His ’99 revolt over the issue of Sonia’s foreign origin was merely a reflection of that absence of trust. In the last seven years, Pawar has blown hot and cold, sometimes hobnobbing with the BJP and sometimes with the third front. But somehow, he has not been successful in recreating the sort of formation he achieved in Maharashtra in ’78. His unabashed ambition and manoeuvres have further distanced him from his own partymen. There is so much discontent in his NCP today that nobody in the state would be surprised if his party splits.Pawar’s politics has therefore to be seen as part of an attempt to reverse this erosion.
