#dnaEdit: Taming the tiger

It was not enough for the BJP to humble its long-term ally-turned-adversary the Shiv Sena at the hustings. With the roles being reversed now — the BJP is the Big Brother in the new dynamics — the Sena is getting a taste of its own medicine. After a long spell of hectoring the BJP and playing to the gallery with Marathi asmita, Uddhav Thackeray is forced to swallow his pride. The sole reason, for the Sena’s willingness to now bend over backwards, is power. Being a regional party with a shrinking base, the only way it can stay relevant is to be part of the BJP-led alliance.

The BJP is exploiting the situation to the hilt by taking slow but measured steps towards government formation. What has aided its design is the unsolicited support from the NCP, which, too, suffers from the same anxiety gnawing at the Sena, and a governor with pronounced BJP leanings. The NCP patriarch, Sharad Pawar, long accustomed to power, is likely to find it hard to accept a five-year-spell in the opposition. Moreover, the prospect of probes into the many scams the party leaders are accused of seems to have acted as a catalyst for the ‘avowedly secular’ outfit to abandon its carefully crafted image. In the race to outdo the Sena for the BJP’s affection, it will abstain from voting during the test of strength in the new assembly. This has made the Sena all the more jittery, forcing a climbdown from its earlier stand that the BJP should approach Uddhav for an alliance. 

After the pre-poll vitriol and post-poll bravado, the Sena is singing paeans to Narendra Modi and Amit Shah in its mouthpiece Saamna. This volte face hasn’t gone down well with a section of the party, which has expressed resentment over the Sena’s haggling over ministries publicly — on posters in Lalbaug and Parel. 

With the BJP opting for a lean Cabinet in the face of allies clamouring for plum ministries, it is highly unlikely that Chief Minister-designate Devendra Fadnavis will accommodate the Sena’s demand for deputy CM and home ministry berths.

However, the BJP also realises why it is better to ally with the Sena than the NCP. First, Fadnavis doesn’t have the political acumen to deal with Pawar, a wily politician, who knows more than a trick or two about coalition politics. That way, the Sena, though occasionally prone to temper tantrums, is more trustworthy and perhaps easier to handle. It has already mellowed considerably and will soften a lot more in the next few days — something the BJP is gleefully anticipating. Moreover, a truck with NCP will show Narendra Modi in poor light since he had attacked Pawar in his election speeches and called the NCP “a naturally corrupt party”. Some BJP leaders, too, had promised to put top NCP leaders behind bars for their alleged roles in scams. In view of that, Pawar’s role in the post-poll scenario has been to safeguard the BJP’s interests and stay in the good books of the single largest party in the state, which also has a brute majority at the Centre. Having performed his task well, he and his cohorts can hope to get a temporary breather from the new government.
The Sena is still the BJP’s ally at the Centre and in BMC, so for Fadnavis, Uddhav is less of an adversary, and more of a sulking ally, who will come around eventually. For now Fadnavis can breathe easy and look forward to his grand swearing-in ceremony on October 31 that the BJP is calling a historic occasion.