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Good Riddance

I cannot claim to know Manohar Joshi. I have only met him a few times. I have also bumped into him at different places. Marriages, seminars, the usual conferences. But every time I have tried to get in touch with him to seek some assistance for someone in need or difficulty, I have never succeeded. For Joshi believed only in helping those whom he could use or manipulate.

That explains his nemesis.

Through the most amazing Goebbelsian doublespeak, Joshi created a charming image of himself in the press. The media loved him. There were articles saying what a wonderful chief minister he was, what a savvy politician and a revered teacher. How everyone in the party adored him and prayed that he would one day take over from his mentor. Article after article would extol him as the sane, practical, most respected voice of the Shiv Sena. The man who deserved to be king. But, alas for destiny, he was only a humble chief minister who had no choice but to follow the diktat of his tough, unrelenting, awesome boss with a penchant for messing things up.

I have enviously listened to the oh-so-sweet stories about him in cocktail party circuits. About his wit, his wisdom, his unflappable charm. I have seen business leaders swoon over him. For them, he was the voice of sanity. The best thing to have ever happened to a party of goons and thugs.

He was the good, clean, safe face of the Sena. The man you could trust.

He and his alter ego, Pramod Navalkar, went as a package. They were the only two the media could identify with. The rest in the Sena were identified as ruffians, criminals, extortionists. Led by their mercurial bossman, whose infamous mood swings kept everyone on the edge. How can we run a government where the orders come from Matoshri [Thackeray's bungalow]? That was the burning refrain of all Joshi's admirers.

They followed it up with a simple solution. Ask Balasaheb to leave Joshi alone and watch him do a great job for Maharashtra. He is like Sharad Pawar, a great administrator and a wonderful man; he understands exactly what the state needs.

This was, of course, not the view of the common man. For him, Thackeray was and will always remain the hero. Joshi was just his flunkey, a role he detested. So while Thackeray went out of his way to help every person who came to him, Joshi sulked and kept aloof. There was nothing he ever did for anyone. The only people who got anything out of him were those who belonged to his own community: businessmen, traders, builders, hoteliers, carpetbaggers of many kinds. Of course, Congressmen were always welcome in his inner circle, particularly those known to be close to Sharad Pawar. Also media people and assorted power brokers who hung around Varsha [the chief minister's bungalow]. He pampered them and, then, used them to spread his network of lies.

Joshi, they told everyone, was anxious to support writers, artists and intellectuals. Thackeray was against them. Joshi was keen to run a good, clean, effective government. But Thackeray would not allow him to do so. Joshi was the man who spoke the language of temperance and wisdom, who was against violence on the streets and the attack on Fire, who refused to bail out the ruffians who were trying to sabotage the Indo-Pak cricket series. Thackeray was egging them on. Joshi admired Husain, loved listening to Ghulam Ali, was keen to usher Maharashtra into the new millennium as a modern state. He wanted the Wharton B School. He wanted new factories, new industries, a new momentum for the nation's business capital. It was Thackeray who was cussed, old fashioned, overtly obsessed with the politics of Hindutva.

Joshi was the liberal, the true blue pacifist. Thackeray, the intemperate fascist. Joshi was the gentle, polite, decent politician desperate to free himself from the bondage of his hooligan party and its headstrong pramukh (chief). He was the Vajpayee of the Sena. Always ready to compromise, always ready to lead the liberals. Thackeray was the Advani.

It was a myth cunningly created and cleverly disseminated. The myth of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Where Joshi was the good doctor and Thackeray, Mr Hyde. The idea was simple: to draw a line between the Sena as it is and the Sena as it could be with Joshi as its leader.

To underscore the point, Joshi made it a habit to deliberately sabotage everything Thackeray wanted. If Thackeray wanted the slums of Mumbai cleaned out, Joshi ensured that the scheme never got off the ground. If Thackeray wanted the poor to get cheap flats, Joshi laughed it away as Utopian. If Thackeray wanted free power for the farmers, it was immediately branded as a profligate, hare-brained scheme. If Thackeray wanted the arrested Shiv Sainiks released, that was a serious compromise of law and order. Even though law and order in the state was at its worst during Joshi's time, with gang wars galore and murders and shootouts almost daily hitting the headlines.

Amidst all this mayhem, the only people who got anything out of Joshi were his crony businessmen and, of course, his family members as the Bombay high court has so eloquently pointed out in the infamous Girish Vyas case. The rest of Maharashtra has been waiting for four years to see him deliver on the electoral promises made by the Sena-BJP alliance. Instead, he simply kept playing politics and sidelining all those he suspected to be close to the Thackerays.

At the same time stories were leaked from Varsha about rifts within the Thackeray family. About power struggles and the battle for dynastic succession. About how the Sena was on the verge of breaking up, how Joshi alone was keeping it together by refusing to take strong steps against the rebels. He was holding the flock together through troubled times. Every time someone came to me to check out a juicy gossip item regarding the Thackerays, it invariably led back to Varsha.

Politics is the art of the possible. It is making the most unlikely dreams come true. But, sadly, all that Joshi did during his four years as chief minister was to subvert every idea that was suggested to him. From the Re1 zhunka bhakar stalls for the poor to the mayor-in-council system in Mumbai. He worked only for the benefit of a small coterie around him. His only friends were Congressmen even as he swore undying loyalty to his leader. Things became so obvious in the end that people stopped going to him and ultimately when Thackeray sacked him, no one shed a single tear for the man. Except, I guess, his businessmen cronies.

That is why he had to go. You cannot have a greedy, self-serving and untrustworthy chief minister in office barely a year before the state elections. A chief minister who is only obsessed with grabbing public land for his son-in-law to put up a hotel or whatever it was that Girish Vyas wanted to put up in Pune, violating every land use law. To sack him was not an easy decision for Thackeray to take, I am sure, but almost everyone in the party was disgusted with Joshi. They wanted him out and Thackeray finally agreed with the popular view that Joshi was a loser for the coming elections. The state needed a more dynamic chief minister and Narayan Rane was an infinitely better fit.

For all those who claimed that the Sena was riven by dissension, it came as a surprise that no one protested when Joshi was thrown out. Instead, there was a sigh of relief all round. In Parliament, Shiv Sainiks celebrated when they heard about the high court strictures. Rane, in the meanwhile, had already announced at a tea party on the eve of the Budget session that all Joshi's decisions on plot dereservations will be probed if the opposition so desires. It was an open offer to show everyone that the government and the Sena had nothing to hide. If Joshi had done wrong, as indeed it appears from all available evidence, then the laws of the land will be free to deal with him as firmly as they want. The party will not defend him.

Meanwhile, the Sena-BJP alliance is readying to make its next bid for power when this term ends. Whether they win or not, they will be fighting together under a new leader. The mood is upbeat. There is hope in the air and, who knows, in the unpredictable world of politics, anything can happen. Who gave Digvijay Singh a chance? But four months of hard campaigning and with some luck he won back Madhya Pradesh, despite the incumbency factor working to his disadvantage.

Perhaps Narayan Rane is banking on a miracle like that. And, with a little bit of luck, Thackeray may even be able to see some of his favourite schemes through before the next elections. If that happens, the alliance may well scrape through.

It is not just the Sena that is relieved at Joshi's exit. So is Maharashtra.

Pritish Nandy

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