End of Family Run Political Parties?

 **Long post alert**

The recent political developments in Maharashtra are not surprising. It was always a matter of when rather than if. The government was based on political backstabbing, political brinkmanship, and political self-interest. Which, in politics, is all fair. Just to refresh the memory of the reader – in the 2019 State Assembly elections, BJP allied with Shiv-Sena (SS). There was ample evidence for BJP not to do so. They were in the pole position in the state politics and SS was increasingly acting erratically. Yet, BJP, for old times' sake, allied. As expected, the alliance romped home with BJP winning staggering 105 seats out of 150 odd seats they fought for. While SS win managed to win only 55 out of 100 odds they fought for. The logic dictated that BJP would have the CM, which was also the case in 2014 when BJP won more seats than SS. However, SS had a different idea this time. They started claiming the Chief Minister position despite being the junior party in the alliance. A variety of political gimmicks happened in the ensuing months. During the post-election results time, BJP, even with public mandate firmly on their side, continued to blunders after blunders. The PR was a disaster, the political maneuvering was short-sighted, and it was evident that BJP is increasingly getting checkmated by SS, NCP, and Congress. 

And again, despite having a public mandate against them, the unholy alliance of SS, NCP, and Congress formed the government with SS managing to get the long-sought thrown of CMship on its head.

All is fair in politics and love. For the first time in the Modi-Shah era, BJP found itself politically outclassed and outthought. It happens!

The government formed through all this was always on shaky ground. The unfortunate electoral of MH now had to deal with Congress and NCP which they overwhelmingly rejected and also have a CM who was inept, inaccessible, and with zero administrative experience. The man did not even contest a single election in his entire life and was so scared of facing people that he chose the safe route of MLC to enter the assembly. The result of the administration was disastrous, to say the least. The government was as always on the brink of collapse and at the same time, stumbling from one controversy after another. Bad handling of Covid, corruption charges of staggering proportion, law and order situation with Hindu-Muslim riots, caste politics rearing its ugly head, the problems were unending. The state’s home minister was caught in a bribery scandal and is in police custody for months now. Another minister is caught in money laundering for a Karachi-based underworld. And that very minister’s son-in-law spent one year in jail for drug cartel business. Then there was a bomb-laden car parked in front of India’s richest family’s house and subsequently a dead body of that car owner floating in Mumbai creek. The stench of all this was unbearable. The development projects had either stopped or were moving along at a crawling pace. Surviving all these scandals, perversely, can be considered a success.

During this time, BJP unleashed its political machinery in Madhya Pradesh, wresting control of the state government. They attempted similarly in RJ, barely losing. They fought a bitter and bloody battle in West Bengal against a bloodthirsty megalomaniac. They regained the Karnataka government and gave a bloody nose to the ruling dispensation in Municipality elections in Hyderabad (almost 30% of Telangana’s electorate is in Hyderabad. Hence the heightened significance). They dominated UP, Tripura, and Goa state elections, forming a clear majority government in all. All this while people of MH continued to wait for their turn. Marathi people were confused about why BJP is playing the ‘lost cause’ card in the state. Why no ‘Operation Lotus’ in Maharashtra. Did BJP just give up on the state? Are they biding time and preparing for the next elections? More importantly, why are they letting people suffer for electing BJP to power and not seeing BJP ruling the state?

Well, BJP hadn’t given up on the state. They weren’t biding for time nor were they waiting for the next elections. They decided to go to the root of the problem, Chanakya style. The current crisis, if we can call it such, is changing political alignments in MH for good. It’s a bold attempt to take care of the issue once and for all. It’s an attempt to put a full stop. Once and for all

The way SS was acting since election results smacked the political etiquette. The boorish and unhinged behavior of the party spokesperson was surely infuriating. There was no rudimentary political respect given to anyone and the barking at everything was nauseating. However, the reality was SS enjoys sizeable political clout in Mumbai, the Konkan region, and north Maharashtra. The party never grew after initial years but they still managed to hold onto roughly 55-60 seats out of possible 288 seats. In 2019 elections, they also had 16% of electoral votes. The NCP also managed to hold on to roughly the same seats and about the same % of electoral votes. That left Congress votes as a pasture for plundering. Even with a hypothetical scenario of all Congressi votes (About 15% in 2019 Assembly elections) going to the BJP, which will never happen, BJP is likely to be still short of the majority. They are the single largest party in MH, with twice the number of seats as its closest rival, but still short of an absolute majority by a decent margin. Their only possible target was to go after SS voters. The ideology was intertwined, yet the strong regionalism that SS voters display is likely to hinder such vote transfer. The way SS leadership and spokesperson were behaving, allying with them again increasingly seem to be implausible.  What is the way of this weird deadlock? Losing MH and being passive, aka Bihar was never an option after the 2014 elections. The state is too important in every sense. Another key characteristic of MH politics is - it is probably the only state where every major political party is right of the center. 

This is where the long game that’s currently unfolding comes into play. The way forward was to have SS become the SS that works with BJP. Keeping SS intact to the extent possible where the regionalist aspirations of the certain populace are not subsumed, the over-the-top Hindutva identity of the SS is still proudly presented and all this is to be done without impacting the pan-India Hindutva identity that BJP has been building for decades now. Splitting the party will only lead to further acrimony within the SS cadre and will potentially still leave Thackey’s to do enough electoral damage and worse, potentially further splinter the Hindutva-leaning vote bank. So, the only way forward was to keep SS intact and surgically remove the Tharckeys from the equation. This was an unthinkable and laughable proposition even a month ago. Yet BJP pushed for this. The key reason is being SS MLAs realize their chances of ever getting reelected are increasingly getting dim. They realize the ground pulse is not in favor of SS. Yet, they are not in a position to challenge the Thackrey’s. Unless the revolt is so absolute that the party stays intact and only Thackrey’s gets transferred out with a one-way ticket. This fight ceased to be about forming the state government but more about realigning the arithmetic where the Hindutva vote bank come together to fight the casteist party like NCP or a Muslim party like Congress. 

This is a bold and audacious plan. I don’t know whether it will be successful. So far, it’s pointing in the direction of complete success. But I don’t think this was ever attempted before, especially in the case of regional parties. All regional parties in India are family-run affairs with a charismatic leader who bought the party up. The control these families have over the party is absolute and going against them is a political death sentence for the rebel candidate. However, if the plot in MH succeeds then it will create a blueprint for the future and will have the potential in impacting various regional outfits like TRS, BSP, SP, and TMC. The political crisis in MH is not limited to MH alone. The repercussions will be felt across the country.

Eagerly awaiting to see how it pans out.