Rise of Subaltern Sena: Neglect of rural MLAs cost party dear

MUMBAI: Eknath Shinde’s mutiny has sparked a debate on whether Matoshree’s obsession for Mumbai and the cash-rich BMC has been the Shiv Sena’s undoing, given the high number of rural MLAs who have deserted it.
By giving a cold shoulder to rural and mofussil Maharashtra, Sena has lost an opportunity to script its own brand of subaltern politics. Such a narrative would have helped Sena create a robust institutional network across the state, groom a young band of rural Sainiks from the BC-OBC and Adivasi communities, and bridge the urban-rural divide that threatens to tear the party asunder, said analysts.

Also, Sena’s practice of years to despatch observers from Mumbai to mofussil areas to control the local party structure is another irritant. It was the late Anand Dighe who had tried to re-assert his authority in the 1990s as the party’s Thane leader vis-a-vis the Sena with Mumbai as its headquarters. Shinde, Dighe’s disciple, has taken the Mumbai-moffusil fight right to the doorstep of Matoshree, said watchers.

Sena’s diffidence to reach out to villages seems strange as the party did make inroads into the heartland and did reap an electoral harvest in the 2004, 2009 and 2014 assembly elections. Sources said the gulf deepened when rural MLAs realised they may be rewarded with ministerships, but they will never be part of Matoshree’s decision-making process.
No wonder Shinde’s list of rebels includes many from the dusty plains of Maharashtra, including Dada Bhuse, Shambhuraj Desai and Pradeep Jaiswal, and 8 of 10 MLAs from Marathwada.

Sena’s Konkan bastion too is apparently doddering as Yogesh Kadam, Khed MLA, and Deepak Kesarkar ( Sawantwadi) have joined the rebel club.
Experts said the Sena leadership’s failure to understand the gravity of the Sena-NCP spat at the village level led to Shinde’s revolt. “For over two years NCP has been stonewalling Sena legislators’ projects. Either budgetary funds are not released in time or projects are deliberately delayed by the administration,” said a Sena functionary.

Thus, many first-time Sena MLAs face a bleak future ahead of the 2024 assembly polls as their Congress-NCP rivals belong to powerful clans with ample resources. But Sena made light of the issue, it is said.

Stating that Aaditya Thackeray turned Sena into a “Mumbai-based corporate conglomerate,” Prakash Akolkar, Sena biographer, said, “Aaditya’s core team includes his upper-crust friends who, alas, know nothing about drought, power cuts, remunerative prices for crops or the employment guarantee scheme. Chances of Sena expanding its social and electoral base across the state seem bleak. Not surprising that a large section of Sena lawmakers chose to join Shinde.”