Prithviraj Chavan's Challenge and Opportunities Prithviraj Chavan has entered Maharashtra’s political theatre at a complex juncture. Yet, his challenges are as much an opportunity, says Loksatta’s Kumar Ketkar, in an exclusive interview with Forbes India M ost of the English speaking elite, particularly those brought up on the “intellectual diet” of the English media, do not comprehend the cultural and economic distinction between Mumbai and Maharashtra. Indeed, “Mumbai” to them is provincial and “Bombay” is cosmopolitan, even though international airlines and the diplomatic cadre in the country began using “Mumbai” more than a decade ago. For the English electronic channels, the cosmopolitan and global Bombay is “abused” by the Marathi “natives”, that is, Shiv Sena and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, who often run riot in the great metropolitan city. Even the so-called High Commands of the Congress and the BJP feel extremely uneasy when the image of Maharashtra is ruined by the Shiv Sena and MNS goons. It is a strange paradox. Almost the entire Maharashtra Congress leadership comes from rural and moffusil parts of the state. Though the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) area has a population close to two crore (that is, one-fifth of the state’s 10 crore people), there has never been a chief minister from Mumbai, and even the cabinet does not have respectable representatives. There is a huge difference between the management of Mumbai and the rest of the state. The images are formed by Mumbai and the policies are shaped by the rural and semi- urban districts. It is this schizophrenic nature of the state that will haunt the new chief minister, Prithviraj Chavan. He has spent his entire political and social life in New Delhi, though his constituency has always been Karhad, a bastion in western Maharashtra, from where the first chief minister, Yashwantrao Chavan, came. The difference between the two Chavans (no relations of each other) is that the first Chavan had his roots in the rural-agricultural life and the current chief minister has his roots in the Capital. With a little bit of luck (or ill luck!), he could have been like Navin Patnaik ofOrissa — not as distant perhaps, but not exactly a son of the soil. Prithviraj Chavan speaks Marathi, had parents who spent their childhood in poor and rural Satara district and is a Maratha, a caste which has dominated the politics of the state for the past 50 years. These factors will bail him out but his worldview is shaped by New Delhi and not by rural Maharashtra nor by vibrant and cosmopolitan Bombay. As a Delhiite, he does not fit into the fratricidal political life of the sugar co-operatives,
