:: Inder Malhotra

A bad beginning in Maharashtra

By Inder Malhotra

Nov 11 : TIME was when today’s Maharashtra, then the multi-lingual state of Bombay, was one of the two best-administrated states, the other being the state of Madras, now called Tamil Nadu. Let us leave the southern state out of this discussion. But sadly, Maharashtra today is one of the worst administered, often rivalling Bihar, with which it has a special relationship of total hostility.

In all fairness it must be said that things in the state whose capital is also the nation’s "financial hub" have been degenerating for a long time, but never so precipitately as of late. The Congress split of 1969, the Emergency followed by Indira Gandhi’s defeat in the 1977 general election, and the birth of the Shiv Sena in the late 60s took their toll, as did the burgeoning building boom in a metropolis desperately short of land. This laid the foundations of the nexus between rapacious builders, politicians in power and their bureaucratic henchmen that has now assumed frightening dimensions.

The watershed was reached when, after the demolition of the Babri Masjid, there were the 1993 "Bombay blasts". The Karachi-based Dawood Ibrahim was able to land one-and-a-half tons of RDX on the Maharashtra coast with the full cooperation of senior customs officers who believed that he was bringing in his usual contraband of gold!

It was in 1995 that, for the first time in Maharashtra’s history, a coalition of the Shiv Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a combination of rabid Marathi chauvinism and strident communalism, came to power. I distinctly remember the then Pakistani high commissioner’s comment: "The key to India’s tijori (cash box) has passed to the Hindutva forces".

However, the Maratha strongman, Sharad Pawar, always retained his strong power base in western Maharashtra and great influence in the Congress power structure in New Delhi. In 1991, after Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination and Sonia Gandhi’s firm refusal to be his successor, Mr Pawar was a candidate for the top job. But the prize went to P.V. Naraimha Rao. Before the 1996 general election — in which the Congress lost power for the next eight years and the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance ruled for six of these eight years — Mr Pawar threw his bombshell, raised the issue of Mrs Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin, and under the slogan Raj kare ga Hindustani, formed the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). For all his fulmination against the "foreigners", however, he had no compunction in becoming the Congress’ junior partner — in Maharashtra in 1999 and in New Delhi five years later.

The main point about all this is that the Congress-NCP alliance has always been uneasy, to put it no more strongly than that. Working at cross-purposes and motivated primarily by greed, the two coalition partners have brought governance in Maharashtra to a very low depth indeed. Towards the end of their second tenure, especially after the horrific terrorist attacks on 26/11, there was a glimmer of hope. Congress leaders started admitting that things had been allowed to get out of hand, and if the electorate gave them a third chance they would make a fresh beginning and make up for the past, giving the state a bright future.

It is already crystal clear that these promises were not only insincere but downright false. In the first place, the new Maharashtra government is really old wine in old bottles. Secondly, the beginning it has made, after celebrating elaborately its "hat-trick", is shocking beyond words. In saying this I do refer to the infamy inside the state legislature on the first day of its session when followers of Raj Thackeray, entering the Assembly for the first time, assaulted a member, Abu Asim Azmi of the Samajwadi Party, for his temerity to take his oath in Hindi when under Mr Raj Thackeray’s dictate, Marathi is the only language to use, and hell with the Constitution that gives every citizen the right to speak and take oath in any of the recognised national languages. All this is abominable, especially in view of the culprits’ declaration that they would mete out the same treatment to anyone "who insults Maharashtra", whatever that might mean.

By my reckoning the worse act of the Congress-NCP leaders is to have brought back NCP’s R.R. Patil as the state’s home minister. In the midst of the 26/11 traumatic events this worthy had the audacity of making the buffoonish statement that "such minor incidents do take place in big cities". He was rightly asked to resign. Now he has been appointed to the same crucial job despite widespread public protests.

Mr Pawar, whose single-point agenda is to transfer the NCP leadership to his daughter Supriya Sule, must have had compulsions. But what made the Congress president and the Prime Minister succumb to his pressure?

Union home minister P. Chidambaram has said repeatedly that another terrorist attack from Pakistani soil can take place though this country is better prepared to deal with it. Can Mr Patil be depended upon to deal with such a situation, especially after the government to which he belongs has willfully suppressed portions of Ram Pradhan’s inquiry report on 26/11 and not done enough to act on its recommendations?

The most chilling implication of the unending outrages — on the day after the hooliganism within the Assembly chamber, the Shiv Sena gheraoed Mr Azmi (whose own political record won’t bear scrutiny) outside the legislature — is different.

Mr Raj Thackeray is politically very useful to the Congress-NCP combine. One and all admitted after the Assembly election that he made a material contribution to the defeat of Shiv Sena-BJP coalition, largely because of his feud with his uncle Bal Thackeray and cousin Uddhav Thackeray. It is no secret that the Congress got 13 additional seats because of him.

In the past, irrespective of what his goons did under his unpardonable instructions he was treated with kid gloves. At a time when he should have been behind bars, he was feted by, of all people, Mumbai’s police chief. A show arrest of him was made but it was allowed to fizzle out. Today he is virtually above the law because for the Congress-NCP government political expediency seems to take precedence over national interest.