Central Hall – Steal the thunder?

It does seem as though politics today has just been reduced to out-smarting each other, settling scores with each other or appropriating others political space. Loyalties, credibility and ideologies have been rendered as relics of the past and hardly matter anymore. The events of the past week suggest that they are there to steal the thunder right under from each-others nose in a bid to out-smart each other.

Changing party colors, ideologies might even make the humble chameleon look a pale figure. Otherwise, who would have thought some months ago that the stridently and ideologically most opposites like the Shiv Sena, Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) would come together for the sake of power. The act has opened up cracks, spaces and vacuum that others like Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) are rushing into fill those.

With the Shiv Sena having to amend its ideological stand and bend backwards on issues of Hindutva, Veer Savarkar and Ayodhya, it has sent the MNS a god sent opportunity to redeem itself. By changing party colors to a more stridently saffronized Hindutva, MNS is trying to occupy the space left behind by the Sena. But the MNS too is open to criticism of constantly changing its goal posts.

Also Read: Central Hall – Second Coming?

From the political high of 2009, the MNS today appears to have hit the political rock-bottom. Will the changing of party flag, saffronisation and strident Hindutva bail out the MNS from the political tight-corner that it finds itself in? Not so long ago Raj Thackeray was stridently critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Now to hob-nob with BJPs leader of opposition Devendra Fadnavis ahead of the rebranding raises some eyebrows.

If Raj Thackeray was trying to reposition himself as the champion of the Hindutva cause, the Shiv Sena and the NCP appeared to be trying to get even with the BJP. It already started doing so by putting brakes on BJPs dream infrastructure projects like Metro 3 car shed or the Ahmedabad-Mumbai Bullet Train project. It would be hard for the government to shrug-off the tag of being anti-development.

Last week the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) made some major bureaucratic reshuffles which indicated its intent to get even with the BJP and Fadnavis. It was an open secret that the Sena had love and hate relationship with Metro Woman, Ashwini Bhide as she supported Fadnavis on the Metro 3 car shed project and L&T consortium that is executing the project. The MVA simply shunted the bureaucrat out, rekindling the 1975 debate of “committed bureaucracy”.

Having dethroned the BJP in its Nagpur Zilla Parishad bastion, the MVA now appears to be gearing itself to oust the BJP from its Nagpur municipal corporation bastion as well. In a carefully crafted move it has transferred tough cookie like bureaucrat Tukaram Munde as the administrative head of the civic body.

Continuing with its spree of either stalling or reversing the decisions of the previous BJP led government, the MVA has chosen to rejig the Agricultural Produce Market Committee’s (APMC) and once again make the political outfits more important than allowing the farmers decide their own fate. It has once again done away with the practice of direct elections to Sarpanchs in Gram Panchayats.

The showdown or shadow boxing between the BJP and the NCP is not by any means over as yet. Just as NCP chief Sharad Pawar wrote to the MVA government demanding a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the Koregaon-Bhima incident of January 2018, the BJP government at the Centre simply transferred the case to National Investigation Agency (NIA), raising quite a few eyebrows.

It has once again brought back memories of a similar stand-off between the Centre and the state government in the aftermath of the 1993 Mumbai serial bomb blasts. Is the Centre trying to suggest that there is a wider national or international conspiracy behind it all? Surely the repositioning and retribution that is going on at the moment, does not augur well for the days to come.