Pawar-watching is a popular political sport in Maharashtra. Practising as well as retired bureaucrats, politicians from all parties and of course mediapersons analyse and debate in pubs, clubs and drawing rooms Sharad Pawar’s moves and manoeuvres, his acts of commission and omission and whether he has any chance of becoming prime minister. Pawar knows that there is a constant focus on whatever he does and enjoys being at the centre of the conversation, particularly among the elite. He has been the PM-in-waiting for a long time now. But he hasn’t given up nor have his followers. Ever since Deve Gowda became PM, Pawar’s acolytes have been saying that the Maratha strongman has been denied his ‘natural’ claim to the top job. To achieve what he considers ‘natural’, Pawar has been building ties across the political spectrum. His camaraderie with the socialists and the communists is well known since his young days in the Rashtra Seva Dal — the youth front of the socialist party. But what baffles the comrades is his bonhomie with Balasaheb Thackeray and his personal friendship with senior leaders of the BJP. Pawar was able to form a Progressive Democratic Front (PDF) in 1978 in which there were members of the Sangh Parivar as well as the socialists. At the time, he had quit the Congress led by Indira Gandhi and formed his own outfit, Congress (S). Euphemistically it was known as Congress-socialist, but people said that ‘S’ stood for Sharad. Pawar is currently in the headlines because of his ‘strategic alliance’ with the Shiv Sena. Ostensibly, the alliance is limited to the Pune corporation, but its ramifications extend far beyond. Sena leaders did not even discuss their new partnership with their ally, BJP. The Sena leadership is confident that the BJP will not rock the boat on this question because the senior leaders of the Parivar have always regarded the NCP as their reserve force. For regular Pawar-watchers, this Sena-NCP alliance was not really surprising. Thackeray’s public statement that Pawar could have become PM long ago, if only he had made this strategic alliance earlier let the cat out of the bag. However, it does not mean that there is imminent change in the offing. Pawar is a long-distance runner and has begun his networking in earnest with 2009 as the target year, or a point before that should the national political alignments dramatically change. That is why Pawar is at once a supporter of Mulayam Singh Yadav without disturbing his relationship with Mayawati. Just as he has kept his communication lines open with Jayalalithaa without compromising his relationship with the DMK. It is in this context that one has to see his participation in the central ministry and the NCP’s working alliance in the Maharashtra government. Over the years, Pawar has become quite openly cynical about questions of his credibility. In power games, he thinks, numbers and strategic alliances matter more than credibility, even political morality. Isn’t the Congress taking contradictory postures vis-à-vis the Left Front — in West Bengal, it opposes the Left Front and at the Centre seeks its cooperation. Polemically this may sound to be the perfect retort. But Pawar knows that it is not a polemical question but a hard core political one. For him politics is not only power, but personal power. That is why the NCP will do his bidding, even if many of his colleagues do not concur with him. Indeed, his senior colleagues have realised by now that they cannot easily desert his leadership. Their political fate was tied to Pawar in 1999 when they decided to join the NCP, protesting against Sonia Gandhi’s ‘foreign origin’. Pawar became the darling of the BJP when he picked up their campaign against Sonia. At the time, Pawar had reckoned that the BJP would not cross the mark of 150 seats and would depend on his newly established NCP. In that situation, he would be a front runner for prime ministership. Those calculations misfired and the BJP won as many 182 seats. Pawar could not win more than six seats in Maharashtra. The Sonia-led Congress withstood his rebellion. But the BJP-led front was grateful to him and accorded him cabinet status. There was a regular offer for him to join the NDA. But the talks fell through because he could not carry his supporters into the BJP axis. His senior leaders were not prepared to take plunge at that time because of their long association with the Congress. There is a caste context to all this. Pawar’s following is mainly in Western Maharashtra, that is, in the sugar belt. This belt has a tradition of anti-Brahmin politics. Maratha caste leaders who were with the Congress regarded the BJP and the Sangh Parivar as a Brahminical force. If NCP leaders were to join the BJP-led front, they would lose grassroot Maratha support, or so they felt. That inhibition does not hold good anymore. The BJP itself now boasts a large number of non-Brahmin leaders. It has very consciously ‘mandalised’ itself. As for the Shiv Sena, it always had support of the OBCs, who were generally neglected by the Congress. In later years, a very substantial number of disgruntled Maratha caste moffusil leaders from the Congress had joined the Sena. They were the second and third layers of the Congress party but were marginalised by the entrenched leadership. Indeed, many Pawar supporters not only joined the Sena, but had become ministers in the Sena-BJP government. Thus there was already a synergy between the Sena and NCP as well as the NCP and BJP. Pawar is a master of political arithmetic. He knows that a weak Congress would not be able to counter his manoeuvres. He had actually showed his hand when he announced the candidature of Rahul Bajaj, who had the support of the Sena and BJP. The Congress, the NCP’s partner in the state government, lost in that Rajya Sabha election. Yet it kept quiet. He has gone a step further now. Pawar will not quit the Congress Front, because that will upset his participation in the central government. But that does not stop him from building new alliances with an eye on 2009. The strategic partnership with the Sena goes far beyond the Pune Corporation. It is this realisation that has made the Congress leadership nervous and angry. The writer is editor ‘Loksatta’
