Sharadchandra Govindrao Pawar or Sharad Pawar, as he is popularly known, is a politician for all seasons. Wily, pragmatic and never one to let an opportunity go by, he has been on the national scene for a quarter of a century besides making his mark as one of the three most popular leaders of Maharashtra after YB Chavan and Vasantdada Patil. However, lately he has had to deal with a dwindling of trust among various quarters.
One of these is the farmer segment, hard hit by recurring drought. With the Assembly elections barely two months away, he cannot afford to dawdle. It is to his advantage that he is in charge of the crucial agriculture portfolio for a second successive term in the Congress-led UPA government. As an agriculturist himself, he is acutely aware of farmers’ problems and owes it to them to ease their misery.
Then, some of his never-say-die supporters in the decade-old Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) are today rebelling against his leadership. While he will have the nuisance of containing overambitious leaders in the party ranks at election time, there is no doubting his stranglehold on Maratha politics. Several times, he has defeated vicious efforts to pack him off to political oblivion by vertically splitting the Maratha leadership. Whenever such attempts were made, by Indira Gandhi and then Rajiv Gandhi, the Maratha leader emerged stronger and the self-seekers who had ganged up against him at the behest of the Congress high command invariably cut sorry figures.
He is unfazed by voices in the Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee, including former CM Vilasrao Deshmukh, pitching for the party going it alone in the coming Assembly elections. Having built the NCP into a formidable force in Maharashtra, Pawar has so far kept his counsel. Yet he is aware of the drawbacks of an NCP-Congress seat-sharing arrangement. There is no doubt that, in any such deal the Congress will get the bulk of the 288 seats with some friendly electoral battles in selected constituencies. And the partner with the larger number of seats will bag the chief ministership.
With the BJP in a shambles in Maharashtra and the Shiv Sena losing its sheen due to various factors, the breakaway Maharashtra Navnirman Samiti (MNS) is seeking to enlarge its sphere of influence. Preliminary discussions are on between the NCP and the Congress for forging a pre-poll alliance. It appears certain that, barring imponderables, the NCP-Congress combine will again be at the helm of affairs in Mumbai. Yet, it must be remembered that Pawar has a reputation for being unpredictable and manipulative.
Pawar’s strength is that he has always retained his individual identity with the NCP being the vehicle. This has helped him retain his grassroots base despite constant efforts since 1962 to divide the Maratha lobby, backed by the sugar cooperatives and the cooperative banks. The Maratha lobby is directly linked to the farmers, who are the shareholders of the cooperative banks.
Having fought and overcome oral cancer, Pawar is nowhere near hanging up his boots. He has been Chief Minister four times and this is his sixth term in the Lok Sabha. He has an excellent rapport and understanding with politicians of all hues. He has the ability to swing things in his favour and has readily lent others a helping hand in crisis situations. All this will stand him in good stead.
