Samikhsya Bureau
If the recent developments in Maharashtra are, in anyway, a gauge to read politics, it indeed has nothing other than opportunism. Where one opportunistic political group, the Bharatiya Janata Party, lost it to its own opportunism, the other three, with a slogan like ‘ we will take back Maharashtra to better days’ has in no less a share in political opportunism when people of the state are just frustrated with the kind of political gridlock for all to see.
One of the major tragedies in the kind of politics that has played out itself in Maharashtra, is that the politicians have forgotten all that tastes as innocence and honest. Because the notion that is pervasive is, that they can debase anything they touch.
On one side they display hatred for each other and once they get power, they try to preach harmony for some time and slowly they also join the same bandwagon where hatred reigns.
These politicians, cutting across political divides, are somehow waist-deep in a sort of crony capitalism and that, perhaps, the driving force that none of the political parties want to wash their hand off of such a revenue-rich state like Maharashtra.
The celebrations over the Constitution Day are just a day old. The entire nation celebrated it but where does the constitution stands today. Is it in the air?
Be it any political party, as long as they are deprived of power, they create the chorus for upholding constitution. And once they step into the threshold of power with some handles like MLAs or MPs, power becomes paramount and then they can throw the constitutional ethics out of the window.
What played out itself that early morning when a certain political party, the BJP, rather surreptitiously, made a make-shift show of claim on power by taking oath minus all that such occasions postulate. In which, a NCP leader like Ajit Pawar remained a stake-holder in that constitutional deviation.
Where does the media stand
Now a new combination of three ideologically separate parties have made it to the victory stand and so any prophesy on its longevity, at this juncture, would be premature. Let them start first.
What appears to be a bigger challenge at this hour is, there are multiple meanings of fair politics. Where the media has a big role, no doubt. Watching majority of the news channels at the national level reveal that, how seriously bifurcated is the definition of fairness in politics.
A section of the media seems under a kind of pressure not to see anything wrong in what happened that early morning in the governor house or even before that.
But, the same media houses have now taken up the task of demonising the trio of NCP, Shiv Sena and the Congress come-what-may. The bias is there for all to see.
Not only critical commentaries but even spelling premonitions for the trio under the chief minister designate Uddhav Thackrey are so desperately visible.
