Maharashtra: Pot calling kettle

With elections to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) — the country’s richest municipal body with a 2016-17 budget of Rs.37,052 crore — scheduled for next February, antagonism between Maharashtra’s ruling alliance partners — the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Shiv Sena (SS) — is spilling into the open. Although the minister of state for education in the Maharashtra cabinet is the Shiv Sena’s Ravindra Waikar, on October 15, the Sena organised a protest march against the BJP, targeting it for declining education standards in the country’s most industrialised state (pop. 114 million). The “KG to PG march” was led by Aditya Thackeray, son of Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray and head of the Yuva Sena, the party’s youth wing, and included over 10,000 party members. During a halt in the march, Aditya blamed BJP education minister Vinod Tawde for “inaction” on policy issues in the education sector. “Despite several promises, Tawde has not made education a priority in the state,” said the youngest Thackeray to have (inevitably) emerged as a Shiv Sena leader. While addressing party faithfuls, Aditya raised several populist issues such as abolition of parent interviews at the time of kindergarten admissions, reducing the load of children’s school bags and facilitating online admissions for junior college students. Unsurprisingly, this sharp attack by an ally has irked Tawde. “The objective of the Shiv Sena’s sudden awareness of BJP neglect of education is to establish Aditya Thackeray as a leader of the Shiv Sena ahead of the Mumbai civic elections,” says Tawde. Adds a Tawde aide who spoke on condition of anonymity: “Had the Sena done its homework, it would have known that the state government is already seized of most of the issues raised at the Sena rally. For instance, we conducted 11 online admission rounds this year and ensured 100 percent online admissions to junior colleges in Mumbai.” Quite clearly, sudden awareness of the acts of omissions and commissions of the BJP minister and government in education has been provoked by the looming BMC election. BMC with its huge budget, is a rich prize and offers vast scope for shakedowns and patronage that the Shiv Sena, which has ruled it since 1985 (with BJP support), has become accustomed. Naturally, the BJP, which rules at the Centre and in Maharashtra state, is keen to make it a hat-trick and rule the BMC as well. Therefore, as the parties gear up to fight the BMC election separately early next year, the decline of education at all levels in the country’s #1 industrial state is a good stick with which to beat the BJP. Indeed, Aditya believes the Sena’s record in contemporising primary education in Maharashtra is better than the BJP’s. Taking a dig at the Central government’s Digital India initiative, he says that whereas the Sena-ruled BMC has distributed 22,170 tablets to class VIII students of the 1,200 municipality-run schools under its ambitious e-learning programme which cost the civic body Rs.15.30 crore, BJP’s Digital India drive announced by prime minister…