Fault lines underpinning politics in Maharashtra
The 2024 Maharashtra election is seen as a battle for existence for all things old and new — parties, leaders and alliances
After witnessing numerous political upheavals, vertical splits, crossovers of prominent leaders, and a constant tug of war for power, six prominent parties will undergo a litmus test on November 20 as Maharashtra goes to the polls. The 2024 assembly election is unprecedented in many ways as it has also exposed some of the crucial fault lines in the state’s politics that are likely to shape its electoral and political discourse. This article presents five such fault lines and the complex web of challenges that these pose.
Reliance on freebies: Campaigns in the state are dominated by sops and freebies like Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana, free LPG cylinders, and free pilgrimages for senior citizens. There seems to be competition between the Mahayuti and Maha Vikas Aghadi on such announcements. Most of these schemes target women voters, who form nearly half of the state’s electorate. The growing over-reliance on such short term appeasement measures underlines the long-term failure of successive governments in effectively prioritising a welfare agenda for the state. To begin with, there are concerns over women’s safety and well-being. In addition, over the past two decades, Maharashtra has slipped on key development indicators. Its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth has dropped by two percentage points over the last 14 years, as per a recent report of the Economic Advisory Council to the PM. Government school students in the state performed much poorer than before in arithmetic and reading skills, as per the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2022. The India Unemployment Report 2023 from the International Labour Organization stated that the proportion of educated unemployment in Maharashtra was 15% in 2022, an 11% rise from a decade ago. Instead of addressing these fundamental concerns, parties are doling out freebies for electoral gains.
Fluid alliances and shifting loyalties: The saffron alliance (Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena) breaking post the 2019 assembly polls led to the formation of the Maha Vikas Aghadi — seen as an unnatural alliance between parties of very distinct ideologies (the Congress, the Nationalist Congress Party, or NCP, and Shiv Sena). Their government was short-lived, and we saw the biggest vertical splits in two parties, the Shiv Sena and NCP, with the larger constituents of both joining hands with the BJP to form the government. While such crossovers are not uncommon in Indian politics anymore, the defecting factions retained the original party names and symbols, which created confusion among voters. This completely undermined the traditional equations that usually determine poll outcomes — long-term alliances, ideological preferences, and cadre loyalties. This maligned the state’s political culture; money, threats, and political opportunism have assumed a bigger role than they had earlier.
Disregard for agrarian distress and climate-induced challenges: A recent report by the Centre for Science and Environment reveals that 60% of the crop damage in the country in 2024 occurred in the state. Despite nearly half its population being dependent on agriculture, there is a lack of concerted efforts to address the agrarian crisis and climate-induced challenges in the state. Political parties seem to have no concrete plan to address this beyond immediate measures such as loan waivers. The demand for the Maratha reservation has roots in the socio-economic challenges faced by the Maratha community, which is predominantly agrarian. While parties across the political spectrum are trying to appease the community, given its electoral heft, there is little attention to addressing the root cause.
Delay in local body elections: Elections to many local bodies in the state have been pending for the last two to five years. These include 29 municipal corporations (including two new ones, Jalna and Ichalkaraji), over 200 municipal councils, and 27 district councils (and the panchayat samitis included in them). This year’s gram panchayat elections are also yet to be held as the government has not decided on sarpanch reservation that is to be done in keeping with a Bombay high court order. The delay in local body elections has enabled the state government to assert greater control over local administrative matters, leading to concerns about the erosion of grassroots democracy. Certain policy decisions within the purview of local bodies are increasingly influenced by political considerations. The issues of ordinary citizens pertaining to “gutter, meter, and water” (sewerage systems, power, and water) remain unaddressed as constituencies have no elected representatives to attend to them.
Development approach: In recent years, Maharashtra has seen a significant emphasis on high-profile infrastructure projects like metro rail, express highways, and the bullet train, an approach that prioritises large-scale projects, sometimes driven by private and elite interests, that comes at the expense of strengthening essential services that would more directly benefit the broader population, such as local railways, state-run road transport, and accessible public roads.
The 2024 Maharashtra election is seen as a battle for existence for all things old and new — parties, leaders and alliances. But beyond that, it will be a true test of voters as their choices will determine the course of the state’s politics for decades to come.
Sanjay Patil is a Mumbai-based researcher working on Maharashtra politics and urban informality. His doctoral work looks at the journey of Shiv Sena between 1985 and 2022.The views expressed are personal
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