The Shiv Sena Bhavan in Mumbai stands deserted during vote counting for the Maharashtra Assembly election on November 23.
| Photo Credit: PTI

Napoleon Bonaparte once said: “Men are ruled by toys.” As the cursed favourite toy, the State of Maharashtra has seen more than its fair share of attention from the country’s central leadership. After five years of a revolving door of leadership, Maharashtra will now enter a phase of more stable leadership—or so one hopes.

The maximum metropolis Mumbai has always been a conurbation of contrasts: tall skyscrapers looking out at a sea of flat blue tin roofs and slum clusters. In the last few years, the State as well has begun to show the same sharp inequities its capital does. Maharashtra’s per capita GDP has seen a slide, moving from second to sixth-highest among States in the last decade. Ironically, even as the State moves lower, its rich and elite rise. The Hurun India Rich List 2024 documents the State-wise distribution of India’s richest people with the highest net worth. Maharashtra continues to hold pole position there, almost doubling its entries from 248 in 2020 to a stunning 470 entries in 2024. Unsurprising, as the State has consistently boasted of the highest number of wealthy individuals.

During the Lok Sabha election, the Mahayuti lost five of the six Lok Sabha seats in the “onion belt” of Dindori, Nashik, Beed, Aurangabad, Ahmednagar, and Dhule seats. The region accounts for over a third of the country’s onion production. A complete ban on onion exports triggered anger among onion farmers, and they voted with their feet. In this round of the Assembly election, the belt has seen more scattered outcomes—a reflection of the BJP’s performance in another agrarian State, Haryana, and the fact that the agrarian crisis and its solution is playing out quite differently in the minds of rural voters. There is swift retribution when policy decisions are unpopular but it is also clear there is no appealing or cogent enough alternative yet that presents itself.

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The Congress party tried to rally support on the near collapse of soybean prices, promising legal status for a Minimum Support Price (MSP) and a price of Rs.7,000 per quintal for soybean. The message and the promise have clearly not hit home. Farmers of Maharashtra want to see why and how a different political outcome will address their needs.

It is a lesson the opposition will have to reflect on quite deeply. As things stand, the Legislative Assembly may not have a Leader of Opposition for the first time simply because none of the opposition parties has managed to win 10 per cent of the total number of seats required to claim that post.

Were critical pressure points different?

Not at all. A pre-election Lokniti survey conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) ahead of the election in Maharashtra found that inflation was a key issue for voters. Ditto with unemployment. According to the government’s own data from the Periodic Labour Force Survey for April-June 2024, the unemployment rate for youths between 15 and 29 years in urban areas was 16.8 per cent. It has certainly not helped that large job-creating projects have been whisked away from the State and handed to Gujarat instead. The Vedanta-Foxconn project loss was followed by the Tata-Airbus aircraft project being shifted to Gujarat.

Not helpful for a State that is currently saddled with a fiscal deficit gap of over Rs.2 lakh crore for 2024-25. What is worse, even more debt is being slapped onto the State’s finances. In October, the State Cabinet approved an interest-free subordinate loan of Rs.1,354 crore for the Orange Gate-Marine Drive tunnel and a similar loan of Rs.2,417 crore for the Thane-Borivali tunnel. Hurriedly stitched together ahead of the election, the Ladki Bahin Yojana comes with an annual burden of Rs.46,000 crore.

Why did Maharashtra vote the way it did?

While granular analysis of flawed and delayed seat-sharing agreements between the Opposition’s Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) on the one hand and caste equations on the other will add more perspective, there are two big lessons for the opposition.

One is that the average voter is no longer interested in or beguiled by “personality politics”. The Thackerays continued with the approach of avenging the personal affront they had faced from their ouster even as the BJP quickly realised that a hyper-local election such as Maharashtra needs specific and concrete solutions. The first step was to emulate Madhya Pradesh’s example of the Ladli Behna scheme and quickly convert it into the Ladki Bahin Yojana to promise cash in the hands of the State’s poor women.

The second, is that there is very little patience any more for the “long view”. Just as the onion belt voted to show their anger in the general election, they have now chosen what looks and feels like the best immediate and localised solution to their problems. A sly nod to the good old communalism card also helped with slogans like “Batenge Toh Katenge” stitching up a “combo offer” of cash in hand, savvy caste strategy, and the promise of safety in religious numbers.

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There is another takeaway for the country’s political opposition. State election results, such as in Haryana and Maharashtra, are met with complete shock. This is not what they expected to see at all, say opposition leaders; this is not how they had read the room. Local reporters, however, shared with simple confidence a week before the State went to election: not only was the Mahayuti going to be the clear winner, the BJP was going to emerge as the single largest party in the State. Where has such a deep disconnect grown between political organisations and the people they want to represent? How much time, effort, and space is being provided to listen to voters and to reflect that in intention and action.

For the State of Maharashtra, binaries will continue to exist. Dharavi will live in the same city as Antilia, plummeting crop prices will live in the same State as surging stock market returns, and deprivation will continue to live alongside unimaginable wealth. But in the dust and rubble of an increasingly familiar and heightened communal and cash pitch pre-election, the people of Maharashtra will now pick up the pieces. Of the voting decisions they made, the narrative they chose and the future that stands before them.

Mitali Mukherjee is Director of the Journalist Programmes at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford. She is a political economy journalist with more than two decades of experience in TV, print and digital journalism. Mitali has co-founded two start-ups that focussed on civil society and financial literacy and her key areas of interest are gender and climate change.