“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” laments Marcellus in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Many a Maharashtrian will echo the sentiment. The inordinate and inexplicable delay at every step of government formation is not the only sign of administrative and political decay the state has been witnessing over the years. True that it took almost a month for chief minister Devendra Fadnavis to allocate portfolios even after the landslide victory in state assembly elections held on November 20. It is also true that the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena and Ajit Pawar’s NCP, even though fairly acquainted with the BJP’s style of functioning, found it difficult to come to terms with the changed political reality in which the BJP has acquired the status of Big Brother and as such laid claim over a bigger pie of the power. This political slug-feast, however, hardly paints a complete picture.
The real issue that Maharashtra has been facing for a while is its crumbling finances and dissipated industrial atmosphere. Chief minister Fadnavis wasted no time in admitting the stress on Maharashtra’s finances and announced a committee to guide the state on finding “newer ways” to mop up more revenue. He knows the real challenge before Maharashtra is to maintain its lead over other states and to bring the richest state back in the game which, of late, has been in close competition with southern states. It is easier said than done — Fadnavis is aware that it is much easier to fix the lacklustre administration than to cement the state’s fragmented polity, the BJP’s own handiwork.
The BJP in Maharashtra unleashed its full force in splitting the state’s two dominant political parties, Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party and Shiv Sena, headed by Uddhav Thackeray. It is pointless to reiterate how successful it was in this endeavour. However, it was not without its after-effects. By splitting two pan-Maharashtra parties, the BJP created four sub-regional outfits. Earlier, the state had two regional satraps. Now there are four: Ajit Pawar and Eknath Shinde. Add to this melee, Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena that BJP groomed as its reserve force only to be used in Marathi-speaking regions to weaken Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena’s dominance. For the uninitiated, it may appear to be a mere game of power politics. However, it is not. Those who understand how political parties function in India and how they generate “resources” will quickly realise the financial implications, though inadvertent, of these power games.
As a direct fallout of this, the cost of industrial investment in Maharashtra rose mani-fold. The number of sub-regional and sub-sub regional political satraps to be “pacified” before investment fructifies shot up to such an extent that industrial investment became less and less attractive. No one would dare say this for obvious reasons, but corruption in the corridors of Mantralaya is the most discussed topic in industrialist cocktail circuits. The reality that investors need to grease many palms at every level from sanctioning projects to getting them to take off has undoubtedly marred the state’s investment climate. Pitted against aggressive states such as Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and even smaller ones such as Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra slowly but surely started losing the game. First, it was the perception, which eventually and unfortunately became the reality. There are hardly any big-ticket industrial investments worth showcasing that have come to the state in the last five years.
Protagonists of the ruling combine may counter this by citing “big” infra projects that are often touted as development. There are two responses to this development narrative. First, by making it clear that it was never all hunky-dowry before these political machinations began post-2019 election results. The rot in the investment climate began when the first Shiv Sena-BJP government in 1995 “drowned” the Enron project only to be revived later at a much higher cost. It was under the same regime that Hyundai opted for Tamil Nadu over Maharashtra when the South Korean giant found J Jayalalithaa, the then chief minister of Tamil Nadu, to be more welcoming than her Maharashtra counterpart, Shiv Sena’s Manohar Joshi. The Sena again was at the forefront in delaying, if not driving out, mega investments in the Nanar refinery project, a joint venture between India’s Fortune 500 Global Oil majors — IOCL, BPCL and HPCL — and Saudi Aramco.
“Contractor-centric” infrastructure projects can hardly be an antidote to missing industrial investments. This is the second point. It is especially true when these infra-projects see cost escalations as high as three-four times the anticipated valuations. Besides, the way some of the projects were conceived and contracts awarded make the talk of “larger public good” sound hollow. It won’t take much effort to demolish this infra-talk and will not be unfair to dismiss them as a “please contractors” exercise.
This makes the task before Fadnavis neatly cut out. His first and foremost challenge will be to bring Maharashtra back in the reckoning. He will have to revive his “Magnetic Maharashtra” initiative which he had conceived in his first term as chief minister to attract investment. It stopped because of Covid and the political mess afterwards. Fadnavis, as chief minister, will have to ensure a smooth ride for industrialists and investors even if this means disarming some of his recently acquired colleagues and allies. To his credit, one must admit that after the initial hiccups and teething troubles, Fadnavis has started showing flashes of administrative and political acumen by denying “important” portfolios to political allies. By doing this, he has shown the resolve to cleanse the system. One hopes that he succeeds for there is certainly something rotten in the state of Maharashtra.
The writer is editor, Loksatta
