Sacked minister now NCP chief: Where’s your sensitivity Mr Pawar?

When Maharashtra minister Bhaskarrao Jadhav celebrated a wedding in his family in Konkan’s Chiplun, the news television screens came alive with its lavishness. It was as if a royalty of the past, in the past, had opened up the purse-strings and made it, to be unkind to Jadhav, a gala circus. Helicopters had ferried some guests. VIPs were all there.

The TV grabs, as Sharad Pawar said then, had made him sleepless. It was a period when drought was simultaneous fare on news television and even then, the intensity of the people’s agony was not coming through. Pawar realised the insensitivity of the politician. Just around that time, the Sangli Mayor and Navi Mumbai’s deputy mayor too had organised grand weddings.

This won’t do, Pawar, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief, had then growled. The mayor had to resign. When after a gap of several months the NCP’s contingent in the Maharashtra cabinet was reshuffled, Bhaskarrao Jadhav was one of the axed. It was assumed, one thought, that he was shown the door for that reason. But who knew that in the course of a few days, he was to get another top job?

On 15 February, exactly four months ago, Pawar had expressed his dismay at the sensitivity of such politicians. Not just when the state was reeling under drought but even in normal circumstances. Those who cannot show restraint, had no place in politics, and suggested that they shift to other arenas. Bhaskar Jadhav has shifted now, from being a minister to being the party’s chief.

He is anointed the chief of Maharashtra unit of the NCP, the biggest among all the state units of the party across the country. It is such an important job that it tempts the Pawar nephew, Ajit, now a deputy chief minister, to interfere in its working on a daily basis. And that assignment comes just months away from the elections to the Maharashtra Assembly. That election can be the make or break kind.

There is reason enough to ask why he has now been given the key party post. Sharad Pawar is not the kind to make such mistakes and it is quite likely that some wise – presumably so – wisdom would be now mouthed on his behalf to explain it away. But it is here that Pawar has shown his insensitivity to the public mood against corruption. Is he so desperate for candidates?

In public perception, lavishness of politicians – their lifestyles start to change the moment they assume elected offices – is associated with pelf and is considered axiomatic but now, with the scams surfacing regularly, there is some resentment.

Jadhav had then lamely explained away that an irrigation contractor from Satara had borne the wedding expenses which were not, by the visuals one saw on the TV and the descriptions one read in the newspapers, modest by any measure. It was not a public-spirited person’s contribution to a mass wedding of the disadvantaged. It was not an expense which allowed for Income Tax deductions. Such lavishness comes from tax-evaded income.

Sharad Pawar apparently thinks that the public mood against corruption is a non-issue and flagging of the issue by the middle class, doesn’t count, and if it did, can be brazened out.

Perhaps Pawar, in his inventiveness, thought that appointing a vocal, aggressive younger, Jitendra Ahwad as working president, an unusual post, would provide a cover and render Jadhav nominal? But damage is done, irreparable at that. The curious thing is, when the outgoing NCP state chief, Madhukar Pichad announced Jadhav’s appointment, he smiled and the audience of party cadre cheered. That says a lot, doesn’t it, of Indian politics?