MUMBAI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Mumbai last week culminated an eventful year for Maharashtra. The ‘jal-poojan’ for a giant statue of the Maratha king Shivaji in the Arabian Sea and an hour-long event from the imposing dais at the Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) marked the end of an eventful 2016 for the State; a year in which the social, political and economic landscape underwent discernible changes all at once.
Even before Mr. Modi had ended his whirlwind tour, a young Devendra Fadnavis emerged as the State’s most powerful leader. When he swiftly rose to galvanise a section of unruly BJP supporters that sultry afternoon, it was evident that Mr. Fadnavis had come out of the shadow of his cabinet colleagues.
By throwing open infrastructure projects worth Rs 1.06 lakh crore for Mumbai, he successfully presented himself as a larger-than-life visionary. A nationally televised ‘jal-poojan’ of the statue meant that the Marathas community,which has been organising a silent, was placated for now.
But cut to the start of 2016, and it was not all rosy.
The year had began on a sour note as the state battled drought and the consequent water scarcity, farmers’ suicides,and a severe malnutrition epidemic. Daunting challenges for any state.
To its credit, the State government's implementation of the Jalyukta Shivar project to augment alternative sources of water in villages made a difference in improving the situation. When the monsoon arrived, the results were visible.
However, the State’s approach to malnutrition and farmer suicides remained shortsighted through the year. Much of the state’s machinery and manpower was needlessly diverted to force change dietary habits of malnourished families in tribal areas while merely waiving off bank loans rather than bringing farmers completely out of a financial rut did not yield results. The suicides continued.
Not surprisingly, the state government’s score on social indicators left much to be desired in 2016.
At the start of the year, key administrative reforms were introduced to change the way Maharashtra conducts business. These included steps taken to decentralise bureaucracy, digitise governance, and lay the foundation for a cashless economy, much before Mr Modi’s address on demonetisation on November 8.
In February, the mega Make In India event brought these slew of reforms to fruition with an assured investment of Rs 7.94 lakh crore. However, several MoUs took time to take off in the absence of land and better connectivity to backward regions. Clearly, the ease-of-doing-business parameters were yet not put in place, and both India and Maharashtra fell a point each on World Bank’s Doing Business rankings by the middle of 2016.
As it turned out, major business MoUs did not materialise. But steps towards decentralisation and digitisation brought better bureaucratic efficiency. For better or for worse, faster clearances become the order of the day even as environmentalists cried foul over regulatory mechanisms being sidelined in the process. There was a sense of stability to the State, however fickle it may have appeared.
The stability soon gave way to turbulence mid-2016 when key State politicians faced charges of corruption including NCP’s Chhagan Bhujbal, BJP’s Eknath Khadse, Pankaja Munde, Girish Bapat, and Vishnu Savra; all of who faced serious charges of impropriety. It was alleged that Mr. Bhujbal had laundered money in order to avail of kickbacks from a contractor who constructed the swanky Maharashtra Bhavan in New Delhi.
Mr. Khadse was on the radar for illegal allotment of land to his relatives while he was still a minister. Both Mr. Khadse and Mr. Bhujbal could not weather the resulting political storm. The former was forced to resign, while the latter was sent to jail after a case was registered by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
Meanwhile, the government’s poor performance on social indicators meant class and communal tensions came to fore all at once. The quota fever visible across the country caught on to the state’s backward communities with Marathas, Muslims, OBCs, and Dalits all demanding reservations. Some communities demanded the dilution of the Atrocities Act in the case of the Dalits. These sentiments were further fanned by the rape of a young girl at Kopardi (in Ahmednagar, around 300 km from Mumbai) and led to the historic mobilisation of the Maratha community. The last three months of the year saw hundreds of thousands of Marathas getting onto the streets, and attending protest marches at Aurangabad, Beed, Parbhani, Osmanabad Jalgaon and even Nagpur during the winter session of the State assembly.
The protest din was replaced by demands for the Chief Minister’s ouster, and it appeared that the State’s recovery from corruption scandals had hit a speed bump. But the government sailed through these turbulent times owing to happening of two events: demonetisation of currency on the night of November 8 and a subsequent verdict in BJP’s favour in the municipal council polls.
Mr. Fadnavis personally walked away with the victory credit, having led the party in more than 30 rallies leading up to the elections. The impact of demonetisation on the farming sector had been drastic, but once again the negatives got overshadowed by the government’s focus firmly shifted now to turning rural economy digital.
The State’s telephone density has been on the rise, and stands at 93 per cent. By swiftly seeding crores of Aadhaar cards to Jan Dhan and Rupay cards during the year, the state government rode the digital wave post the demonetisation announcement to tide over a possible crisis.
Maharashtra now stands on the cusp of change, and for better or worse, 2017 holds promise and hope of a better future, provided the government shows the same alacrity in implementing proposed projects and schemes as it has shown in getting clearances.
