Eye on Maharashtra: Fadnavis misses the bus, again!

Decades ago, when Sharad Pawar was just rising as a star politician, he decided to take some journalists to a weekend bungalow in the hill station of Lonavla, between Mumbai and Pune. As some old-time journalists tell it, there was food, drink, music and what they didn’t really want but Pawar insisted on – walks through the hills to work off the calories consumed. On one such walk, it started to drizzle. No one had an umbrella and they, including Pawar, kept walking through the rain.

Suddenly, a Maharashtra state Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) bus screeched to a halt just ahead of the trekking journalists and the very horrified driver hoppeddown and came sprinting towards Pawar. He was very upset that Pawar didn’t have a vehicle and was soaked in the rain.

“Saheb, please come and sit in my bus and I will drop you wherever you wish to go,” he urged Pawar. A bemused Pawar declined pointing to the journalists, many of whom contrary to Pawar’s inclination did want to get into the bus and under shelter from the rain.

“We are enjoying our walk in the rain. You please carry on with your work. Don’t worry about us,” said the man who decades later would become even more famous for campaigning soaked to the bones through pouring rain (in October 2019).

As the unhappy driver realised he would not be able to give Pawar a ride in his bus, the journalists were taken aback when he finally said, “Saheb, you do not know me but you gave my handicapped brother a job. If you had not arranged for his employment his family would have been in deep trouble and we would not have known how to survive.”

The driver said there was no way they could thank or repay Pawar enough, so he had hoped that offering Pawar a ride in his bus, pulling him out of the threatening rain and dropping him to the last mile wherever he wanted to go would be a small thanks and return for saving his suicidal brother’s life. He was very unhappy that Pawar did not oblige him and allow him to thank himin his own little way, even if it meant diverting a route and risking his own job.

This, then, has always been the strength of Sharad Pawar, the devotion of the common man that eludes most other politicians today.

This story is also a legend within the MSRTC and passed down among the staffers, so it is highly unlikely that its workers would have wanted to harm Pawar anyway even today. Firstly, those who tried to barge into his home last week had no reason to hold him personally responsible for any of their travails.

Secondly, the Bombay High Court had already instructed the Maharashtra government to reinstate the workers who had been striking for overthree months and the government had agreed to comply. And finally, most of the demands of the workers had been accepted including a handsome pay hike generally not offered under such circumstances.

The MSRTC is a corporation that has been running in losses for years and the losses happen because,unlike other state transport buses, those operated by the MSRTC are truly the poorman’s transport.Other state corporation buses usually plyonly the highways and main roads, the MSRTC goes down to the dead end of the last road in the villages. Which is what allows the parents of young girls to send them to school.

During the long months of the MSRTC strike, the education of young girls had suffered in addition to the Covid restrictions as parents could not risk buying bicycles for their daughters – boys, however, were allowed that luxury - for fear the girls may be kidnapped ormolested on the way. MSRTC buses pick up and drop students in full sight of teachersat school and parents at home in the villages and most Maharashtrapoliticians knowthis.

That is why the BJP fuelled the MSRTC strike in the hope the inconvenience to villagers would create resentments and help their attempts to bring down the Maha Vikas Aghadi government. But when that did not happen and everything looked to be settled and returning to normal,suddenly some MSRTC workers descended on Pawar’s private residence with reports that they intended to do him physical harm. Police swiftly arrested Advocate Gunaratna Sadavarte who was the instigator of the violence.

Now former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis is in the dock amid reports that it is he who has been supporting the strike as police have told the courts that Sadavarte was in constant touch on his phone with Nagpur, Fadnavis’s home turf, throughout the attack. Even BJP workers are stunned that a veteran and universally respected leader like Sharad Pawar should be physically targeted merely for a personal ambition to return to the chief minister’s office.

Media presence at Pawar’s home before the attack indicates that it was an orchestrated move and Fadnavis’s emphasis on intelligence failure on partof the police points to his frustration at the fact that by now the MVA has wised up and not onlyreplaced all his previous appointees in high positions butis also probing their actions- like in the case of top cop Rashmi Shukla – while in office.

This has not onlyeffectively cut off Fadnavis’s access to classified information but now every time Fadnavis comes up with an allegedly revealing bit of information against the MVA, there is immediately a counter narrative against him. Like when he claimed that a Wakf Board member MudasirLambe had connections with Dawood Ibrahim, the bureaucracy were very obliging enoughto promptly arm their home minister Dilip Walse Patil with the information that Lambe had been appointed to the board by Fadnavis himselfwhenhe was the chief minister. A photo of Fadnavis with Lambe also surfaced on social media, causing much damage.

Obviously, Fadnavis believes it isPawar who holds the MVA together and harming him will shake up the MVA. But he should remember Pawar is unlike the cowards like Raj Thackeray or Narayan Rane who have surrendered to the BJP’s bullyingtactics and use of central agencies against them. Moreover, Pawar is the most senior and respected opposition leader in India today,including by Fadnavis’sown party leaders like NarendraModi who has declared Pawar as his political guru.

Then, again, Fadnavis seems not to know Maharashtra’spolitical culture which has been more about friendly fights amongrivals and never been about physical attacks. Pawar’s was the first ever coalition government in the country which had included Jan Sangh members as ministers. The RSS remembers that detail. Fadnavis forgets it at his own peril.

(This was first published in National Herald on Sunday)

(Views are personal)