Bulldozers shower marigolds on Shinde, as Maharashtra CM apes the PM

"Shower of flowers from 50 JCBs! This is how Maharashtra’s illegally installed Chief Minister Eknath Shinde got himself welcomed in Satara. Not even Rajas and Maharajas of the bygone past indulged in such wasteful self-glorification," tweeted socio-political activist Sudheendra Kulkarni, while sharing the video below on Sunday.

The idea of such a ‘royal’ progression may have come from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent roadshows in Kerala and Karnataka.

In Kerala, the PM actually walked some distance ahead of his cavalcade, with people mobilised on both sides of the road to shower flowers on him.

This was repeated in Bengaluru, where the PM stood up in the car and waved at the crowd through the sun roof. Here, too, people lining up on both sides of the road showered flower petals on him.

As is now almost customary at political events, the flowers were the ubiquitous marigold in colours of bright orange and shades of yellow. The flowers cost between Rs 100–150 a kilogram and the crowd had obviously been mobilised, handed the flowers and tutored. As observers cynically observed, all the people seem to have bought the same kind of flower and from the same flower seller!

Now the Maharashtra chief minister Eknath Shinde is accused of aping the PM. In a viral video posted by media outlet Loksatta from Satara, the chief minister’s cavalcade is shown being showered with fistfuls of marigold petals. But the crowds were missing at the site, which looks like a construction project on arid land and away from human habitation, with outlines of hills seen in the background.

So, the enterprising entrepreneur is seen to have lined up JCB backhoes and bulldozers on both sides, each one with four or five people perched in the bucket and showering flower petals on the chief minister. It made for the most unusual welcome a chief minister may have received anywhere.

To be fair, there is no evidence that the chief minister approved this, and he has often been showered with flowers by way of welcome. But from bulldozers?

While the tweeters on Twitter in general found the welcome by flower-showering bulldozers vulgar, the cynics in particular were working overtime to unravel whether the bulldozers had a hidden symbolism. Was Mr Shinde trying to signal to his fellow traveller, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, that bulldozers were better used to shower flowers than to demolish the houses of the poor or of dissidents?

In any case, with several state elections coming up later this year, the market for marigolds is booming. More savvy politicians are likely to spend money on getting flowers enough for a sprightly shower or two while campaigning.

With fancy marigold garlands being sold on Amazon at prices between Rs 250 and Rs 500, marigold cultivators can hope to laugh all the way to the bank. But as usual, the cultivators are possibly at the losing end, with suppliers and traders in the middle making the moolah.

Nevertheless, if you are unemployed and are not still engaged  in selling pakodas, perhaps you could make a living out of selling marigold flowers. Maybe that is the message that the PM, CM Shinde and their ilk are signalling?