In the highly competitive and intensely fought Maharashtra assembly elections of 2024, politicians from the ruling coalition are trying their best to gather the support of the ladki behenas (beloved sisters), while their opponents are trying equally hard to reach out to their own versions of the ladka voters. We tried to focus on the ladka netas, or the political elites in the state of Maharashtra. Much of the media glare is on popular leaders like Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, or former CM Uddhav Thackeray, veteran Maratha leader Sharad Pawar, his rebellious nephew Ajit “Dada” Pawar, Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis, and others who are all playing a crucial role in these elections. However, our focus is on the political elites, who have been able to hold on to their bastions or constituencies for a long period, becoming entrenched in local politics, so much so that they tend to dominate politics at the local level, creating their own pockets of influence or what could be called their respective fiefdoms, emerging as the ladka netas in their respective regions.
In the 1980s, political scientist Jayant Lele showed how political elites within the Marathas dominated the levers of power in the state from their agricultural bases in the rural sector, and also systematically excluded the exercise of influence by other castes and classes. According to Donald Rosenthal, who has also written extensively about political elites in Western Maharashtra, the central thrust of Lele’s work demonstrated the tightly interwoven strands of influence exercised by the political elite of Maharashtra, such that the numerous personal conflicts among its members did not or could not essentially disrupt its domination.
According to Rosenthal’s own analysis, ‘Making it in Maharashtra’, he found a few common features which constituted the basic framework of the making of a political elite. Dynastic background, ability to use one’s office as an MLA or some other position to further expand one’s grip on the region’s political economy by placing loyal political workers in positions of power in the co-operative factories, district development boards, district co-operative credit banks, agriculture produce market committees, zila parishad, taluka panchayats, etc. A successful political elite is one who is not necessarily wealthy, as one analyst put it, but has the ability to mobilise resources. Belonging to a political dynasty or a business background often helps in achieving this.
One of the ways in which a politician could establish themselves as a political elite is by winning continuous elections, creating an uninterrupted reign in power. Pusad, in Yavatmal district, is such a constituency. It has been represented by a member of the Naik political dynasty since 1952. Vasantrao Naik and Sudhakarrao Naik, both of whom were former chief ministers of Maharashtra, are two stalwarts to have represented the Naik political family. Speaking with a group of voters from the Banjara community in Chondhi village of Pusad, it emerged that in such places, family identity triumphs over lack of development or high levels of unemployment as a strong consideration for determining the vote choice. In our research, which uses a mix of field interviews and analysis of the electoral data of past elections, we found around 69 such MLAs in the Maharashtra Assembly who have been continuously winning from their constituency at least for the last three elections. In other words, 69 MLAs can be seen as political elites. In the 2024 Assembly elections, 47 out of these 69 MLAs are re-contesting from their own pockets of influence.
A careful analysis of these 69 MLAs, which includes a close reading of their affidavit information gives us some insights into their social, political and economic background, which is important to understand the uninterrupted electoral success of these political elites. Around 17 MLAs from this group come from a political family or are part of a political dynasty and also have a business background, which ensures a steady supply of both social capital and economic resources cumulatively resulting in political power. There are 10 MLAs who have dynasty connections but no substantial business background and there are 14 MLAs who have a background in business enterprises but do not come from any political family. The mix of a political dynasty connection and a substantial business background is one that gives any potential politician an edge against challengers.
Dynasty, the dominant factor
As part of our research when we looked at around 340 dynasty politicians in Maharashtra (which is not an exhaustive list), we found at least 110 to be contesting the assembly elections this year. Most of these political dynasties/families have been involved in the state’s politics for only the last two generations. This is the time during which political scientists like Lele and Rosenthal documented the making of these political elites in the rural countryside of Maharashtra. The patriarch and the spouse and/or siblings of the patriarch consist of first-generation, with the second-generation being their children, nephews, nieces, etc.
There are dynasties like the Thackerays, Chavans, Pawars, Hirays, Zanaks, and Kshirsagars where even the third-generation descendants are actively involved in politics. On the other hand, there are dynasties like the Mohite-Patils and the Thorats, the family of Shankarrao Patil, whose third-generation descendants, while they may not be contesting the Legislative Assembly elections, are still involved in local-level politics, such as being part of their respective party’s youth wing, members of the Municipal Council or Zila Parishad, or even members of the Legislative Council (Vidhan Parishad). In the case of the Chavans, Deshmukhs, Vikhe-Patils, and Sushil Kumar Shinde’s family, many members have been elected to the Indian Parliament and have held ministerial positions in the Union Cabinet. Politicians from such families can be classified as part of the more entrenched political elites.
There are also several political elites who are yet to achieve that entrenched status, belonging to political families, where their parents/grandparents were not necessarily involved in electoral politics, but they are the first generation to do so along with their spouses, siblings, sons, and daughters. Essentially, duos of husband-wife (Ravindra-Manisha Waikar, Laxman-Ashwini Jagtap), or parent-child (late Baba Siddiqui-Zeeshan Siddiqui, Nawab Malik-Sana Malik, Eknath Gaikwad-Varsha/Jyoti Gaikwad, Arun-Geeta Gawli), or siblings (Sanjay-Sunil Raut, Vinod-Ashish Shelar). Such political elites could be classified as political elites-in-waiting or even future political elites.
It is interesting to note the pervasive presence of such political elites across different political parties in Maharashtra. Although most of the patriarchs of the entrenched political elites emerged out of the Congress, as that was the party in power for a long part of Maharashtra’s political history, major parties like Shiv Sena, BJP and NCP have also appropriated and incorporated such political elites from time to time, sometimes at the cost of their own party’s organisational strengths. In the 2024 assembly elections, according to our estimates, the Mahayuti has nominated the most number of dynasty candidates — as many as 54. The BJP, which is quite vocal against the politics of parivarvaad in its political campaigns, has nominated the highest, at 29 politicians who come from a political dynasty. The Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) on the other hand has 37 candidates who represent the legacy of a political family or dynasty. Within the MVA, the Congress has given party tickets to the maximum number of dynasty candidates at 17.
A common occurrence among different types of political elites is their ability to use business networks to create more opportunity structures for their political work. What started with the reorganisation of the cooperative sectors of sugar, milk and banking in the post-1956 from Western Maharashtra has now successfully been replicated across different regions of the state, and in several cases, the political elites have also adapted with the transformation of the economy to shift or diversify their business interests from sugar factories to education institutes and increasingly into the real estate and construction sector and agro-industries in the more recent past, to keep their businesses aligned with the transformations in the political economy of the state. Overall, access to such business networks helps political elites to raise funds for their election campaigns to seek and obtain re-election, develop and control patronage networks by providing jobs and employment at the local level and also allows them to bypass derelict party organisations and create individual campaign teams of loyalist supporters, which carry out effective mobilisation and consolidation efforts to ensure the electoral success of their ladka netas.
Bagchi teaches courses on Indian Politics and Democracy at Ahmedabad University. Shaikh is a researcher based in Maharashtra and Ranjan is co-founder of DALES (Data Action Lab for Emerging Societies)
