Most Mumbaikars I know are no longer sure who their state’s chief minister is. ‘Did we always have just one CM or more?’ has also been doing the rounds beyond ‘Daal me kuchh Kala Ghoda’ experimental theatre. Kaun Banega Crorepati-type multi-answer questions have popped up, where questions with options for answers are posed, like: Who is the deputy chief minister of Maharashtra? A) Eknath Shinde B) Ajit Pawar C) Devendra Fadnavis D) Salman Khan.
It seems that the idea of the vote itself – the voter voting for a candidate and/or party of his or her choice – has been shorted for good. As a Marathi friend of mine based in WhatsAppur said, ‘It’s like my subscription to National Geographic magazine. I just subscribed for a year, but they’ve announced that the print edition will shut down early next year. So, my magazine vendor has decided on his own that instead of returning the amount for the no-longer-existing editions of Nat Geo, he’ll send me the equivalent worth of Reader’s Digest.’ My friend is not remotely interested in reading Reader’s Digest from next year. But clearly, these things are above his subscription grade.
What is interesting is the smoothness with which Maharashtra conducts binary fission – the process by which a single entity divides itself into two (or more) parts, with those parts regenerating into separate entities resembling the original. To be fair, Sharad Pawar and his nephew aren’t identical. (But then, neither is Uddhav Thackeray and his uncle.) For starters, Ajit has a moustache, Sharad doesn’t. And as nephew reminded uncle in a manner very similar to Roman Roy reminding Logan Roy, the latter is 82 years old – while he himself is a mere stripling of 63 summers (he turns 64 Saturday after next).
The fact that democratic politics doesn’t really matter in Maharashtra any more makes sense. Barring people who need government jobs – from file-pushers in the formal sector to taxi-auto drivers in the informal one – India’s richest state with a gross state domestic product (GSDP) of over $400 billion (₹33 lakh crore) runs tickety-boo despite its administration, not because of it. For those analyses (sic) of the latest flux in Maharashtrian politics, anyone having the time or interest to go through them can easily surmise that 97% of these political investigations are simply stringing up one incremental event after the other – chronology samajhna – like a Test match update. The rest is all Boolean shit algebra.
Making prognostications in politics is getting easier by the day, not harder. The first-past-the-post principle is now pretty much overwhelmed by what happens past the post. And what happens in this green room – usually in hotel resorts – is that the Big Suitcase wins by winning over those who originally may have won. That may sound meta, but it really isn’t. The house (almost) always wins. At least in Hindi-conversant states. Maharashtra has become a frontrunner in this track and field. Whether it’s Shiv Sena or NCP, it’s all the rage now for entities to split themselves up into a double role like a hero(es) in a Manmohan Desi movie. And then, like in a David Dhawan movie, each of the two lookalikes go into a comic spree to try and convince the girl (read: Election Commission) that he is the ‘real one’. With politics turning so boring, it’s remarkable that its coverage can be made so exciting. But that is a function of a ‘vibrant democracy’ like ours – leaving the boring bits (administration, the social contract with the citizenry, enterprise) to competent, private individuals and organisations, while making a song-and-item number dance of the political drama that serves no real purpose except to provide entertainment and facilitate a unidirectional transfer of powers. After all, have you ever figured out what exactly a deputy chief minister does?