How Maharashtra went from pioneer in governance to a mere copycat

Then came the historic moment. The Opposition, led by Dhulap, moved a resolution in the state assembly to raise the tax to create a corpus to fund drought-mitigation measures. It remains unparalleled in India’s legislative history because there are hardly any instances where the Opposition asks for a tax hike and the treasury supports the move. It also shows the maturity of political leaders of the time. The move resulted in the state assembly unanimously resolving to levy a 15 paise surcharge per passenger per journey on state transport bus tickets. This is how the unassuming Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS) came into being. Three decades later, Manmohan Singh as prime minister adopted it at the national level and, subsequently, rechristened it as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA).

Just a few years after Page’s brainchild came into being, Sharad Pawar, who became Maharashtra’s chief minister at the age of 38 in 1978, took a landmark decision that granted equal rights to daughters in inherited property. Around 16 years later, in 1994 as a fourth-time chief minister, he fortified it by introducing 33 per cent reservations for women in local self-government. Soon, that too, was embraced at the national level. A decade later, in 2005, the efforts of another chief minister, Vilasrao Deshmukh, empowered the citizens of Maharashtra with the Right to Information (RTI) Act. Subsequently, that, too, was adopted at the national level.

These are some examples — going all the way back to 1902, when the reformist Shahu Maharaj showed the path to social equality by opening up reservation for Dalits in the princely state of Kolhapur — of how Maharashtra’s political class displayed social, political and economic ingenuity in governance.

Not any more. Thanks to the incessant Lilliputisation of Maharashtra’s polity, dotted with unimaginative politicians, Maharashtra is no longer a pioneer in innovative schemes that cross the state’s boundary and become national. It is now the reverse. Of late, Maharashtra has been showing signs of degeneration on almost all fronts, including in governance. And the leadership is happy copy-pasting schemes from others.

For example, the Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana scheme announced in the state budget on June 28 is a replica of Madhya Pradesh’s Ladli Behna scheme, introduced by Shivraj Singh Chouhan. Perhaps Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde hopes that, like in Madhya Pradesh, voters in Maharashtra, too, will repose faith in him in the assembly elections later in the year. And that’s not the only “copy”. Like many central government schemes that have Pradhan Mantri (PM) as a permanent prefix, Shinde, too, is busy launching schemes beginning with the words “Mukhya Mantri” (Chief Minister). It doesn’t end there. Some of his overzealous acolytes are trying hard to portray Shinde as Maharashtra’s very own “Bulldozer Baba”, akin to Yogi Adityanath of Uttar Pradesh, for his alleged drive against the drug mafias. Incidentally, this is yet to bear fruit.

However, Shinde alone cannot be blamed for aping his counterparts in other states and successful politicians elsewhere. When the cow slaughter ban in the north yielded rich political dividends, former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, too, was lured into reviving similar legislation in the state. Another case in point could be “love jihad”. This was one of the early resolutions of the incumbent government when it wrested power after ousting the Uddhav Thackeray-led alliance government in 2022. The Shinde-Fadnavis government went to the extent of setting up a panel under BJP veteran and the state’s Women and Child Welfare minister Mangal Prabhat Lodha to monitor “inter-faith marriages”. Lodha later stirred up a controversy by claiming his panel has been flooded with “lakhs of ‘love jihad’ cases”. However, he later retracted the statement, saying that the sole reason for forming the panel had been “to help those girls who have gone against the wishes of their original family (in marrying). We want to protect them, we want them to communicate with their original family. There is no ‘love jihad’ angle”.

There are some other examples. All of them lead to the same bitter truth. In a state that was once a leader in innovative, people-friendly and progressive ideas in governance that went on to shape the social and political landscape even at the national level, the current breed of politicians has lost its mojo along with the ability to think out of the box. Some believe this is the result of the state losing its preeminence in economic matters. In reality, it is the other way round. The rot in politics set in first, followed by economic decay. From a bright torchbearer to a lamentable copycat, Maharashtra has witnessed a steep decline. If left unattended, there will hardly be anything “maha” left in the state.

The writer is editor, Loksatta