Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis must answer disgruntled Maharashtrians

Dec 24, 2024 07:04 IST

First published: Dec 24, 2024 at 07:04 IST

“Something is rotten in the kingdom of Denmark” laments Marcellus in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Many Maharashtrians will echo the sentiment. The unnecessary and inexplicable delay in every step of government formation is not only a symptom of the administrative and political decay the state has been witnessing for years. It is true that it took almost a month for Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to allot the departments even after winning the state assembly elections on November 20 by a landslide. Although well known by Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena and Ajit Pawar’s NCP. With BJP’s modus operandi, it became difficult to come to terms with the changed political reality in which BJP has acquired the status of Big Brother. As the larger pie of power is claimed. However, this political slug-feast cannot fully portray it.

The real problem Maharashtra has been facing for some time now is its declining economy and deteriorating industrial environment. Chief Minister Fadnavis wasted no time in acknowledging the strain on Maharashtra’s finances and announced a committee to guide the state in finding “new ways” to collect more revenue. He knows that the real challenge ahead of Maharashtra is to maintain its lead over other states and bring the richest state back into the game which has been in close competition with the southern states of late. It’s easier said than done – Fadnavis knows that it’s much easier to fix a weak administration than to cement the state’s fractured politics, the BJP’s own handiwork.

In Maharashtra, the BJP used its full power to split the two dominant political parties in the state, the Nationalist Congress Party led by Sharad Pawar and the Shiv Sena led by Uddhav Thackeray. It is needless to repeat how successful he was in this endeavour. However, it was not without its after effects. By splitting the two pan-Maharashtra parties, the BJP created four sub-regional organizations. Earlier there were two regional ministers in the state. Now there are four: Ajit Pawar and Eknath Shinde. Add to this fray, Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, which the BJP began to use as its reserve force only in Marathi-speaking areas to undermine the dominance of the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena. To the uninitiated it may seem like a mere game of power politics. However, it is not. Those who understand how political parties work in India and how they generate “resources” will immediately feel the financial implications of these power games, albeit unconsciously.

As a direct result of this, the cost of industrial investment in Maharashtra increased manifold. Industrial investment is becoming less and less attractive, with a number of sub-regional and sub-sub-regional political satraps “quieting” before the investment flourishes. For obvious reasons no one dares to say it, but corruption in the corridors of the Ministry is the most talked about topic in industrialist cocktail circuits. The fact that investors have to grease multiple palms at every level, from approving projects to commissioning them, has undoubtedly affected the state’s investment climate. Against aggressive states like Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Telangana and smaller states like Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra slowly but surely started losing the game. First, it was a perception, which eventually and unfortunately became a reality. In the last five years, there are few large industrial investments worth showing in the state.

Protagonists of the ruling coalition can counter this by citing “big” infrastructure projects, often seen as development. There are two responses to this development story. First, clarifying that it was never all hunger-dowry before these political machinations began after the 2019 election results. In 1995, the first Shiv Sena-BJP government “sunk” the Enron project to revive it at a very high cost and the investment climate began to rot. It was in this regime that Hyundai chose Tamil Nadu over Maharashtra when the South Korean giant found then Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa more welcoming than her Maharashtra counterpart Manohar Joshi of the Shiv Sena. The Army was again at the forefront of delaying a major investment in the Nanar Refinery Project, a joint venture between IOCL, BPCL and HPCL – and Saudi Aramco.

“Contractor-centric” infrastructure projects can hardly be a remedy for lost industrial investment. This is the second point. This is especially true when these infrastructure projects see cost increases three to four times higher than estimated valuations. Moreover, the manner in which some projects are conceptualized and awarded contracts renders the talk of ‘larger public interest’ hollow. It does not take much effort to break down these infra-negotiations and it would not be unfair to dismiss them as “please contractors” exercises.

This leads to Fadnavis cutting well. His first and foremost challenge is to bring Maharashtra back into the reckoning. He will have to revive his “Magnetic Maharashtra” initiative that he conceived during his first term as chief minister to attract investment. It was put on hold due to covid and subsequent political turmoil. As chief minister, Fadnavis will have to ensure a smooth ride for industrialists and investors even if it means disarming some of his recently acquired colleagues and allies. To his credit, one must admit that after initial hiccups and teething problems, Fadnavis began to show flashes of administrative and political acumen by denying “important” portfolios to political allies. By doing this, he has shown his determination to purify the system. Hope he succeeds as something is definitely rotten in the state of Maharashtra.

The writer is the editor of Loksatta

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