From Congress-System to Non-hegemonic Multi-party Competition: Politics in Maharashtra

The paper reviews the changing nature of politics in the state of Maharashtra – an important subnational state in India. Politics in the state underwent a shift in 1978 and later again in 1990s. The present moment (2014) may be seen as the third shift firmly pushing the state out of the grips of Congress dominance. State politics has witnessed not only the decline of the Congress and a somewhat stable coalitional competition during the 2000s, it has also witnessed a decoupling of structures of economic power and structures of political domination. This development has led to the main ruling community in the state, the Marathas, being restless. Thus, social, political and economic factors have coincided in producing a juncture of political competitiveness that fails to produce well-being in the larger sense. While discussing the political shifts, the paper would also connect with the nature of state’s economy. It will be argued that Maharashtra’s political economy has witnessed certain distortions during the past decade (or more) and that they are closely connected with the political changes in the state. The assessment of competitive politics and political economy would not only be relevant for understanding the politics of Maharashtra, but it should be instructive in making sense of the overall situation of ‘more and more competition for less and less’ that characterises India’s democratic politics of the 1990s and the early 21st Century.