Why did the Congress-NCP win Maharashtra? If you say “Raj Thackeray,” you have a point. After all his Maharashtra Navnirman Sena won in 13 Assembly constituencies that would have otherwise returned Shiv Sainiks. Raj also played spoiler elsewhere — in a full 40-45 constituencies, bellowed the bellicose BJP spokesperson. If these (possibly inflated) claims are to believed, a Raj-less scorecard for Maharashtra’s 288-seater assembly would have been: BJP/Sena 136, Cong/NCP 112.

But think about it: after 10 years of universally agreed-upon poor governance by the Congress-NCP, is this all the state opposition can rustle up? Why does Maharashtra’s opposition, even when, hypothetically, Raj-less, still fall short of a majority, with just a few more MLAs than the Congress combine? Any answer also answers another question: why has the Congress ideology, official plus rebel, only lost power once in Maharashtra, in 1995 to the Shiv Sena-BJP? (The others were Congress rebels: realignments within Congress, not an ideological break.) Why has the opposition to the Congress in Maharashtra always been so weak?

For an answer, consider the parties that have successfully opposed the Congress in other states: backward-caste or OBC parties (the RJD in Bihar, SP in UP), the Communists (Bengal, Kerala), parties that appeal to regional pride (DMK in Tamil Nadu, or Telugu Desam in AP), and of course the BJP. Where are their analogues in Maharashtra?

An OBC party in Maharashtra is handicapped by numbers; studies suggest that OBCs form 14.5 of rural Maharashtra. That’s tiny compared to 37 per cent in Bihar and 55 per cent in Tamil Nadu. The largest caste formation in Maharashtra, the Maratha-Kumbis, consists of sub-castes that historians (and the sub-castes themselves) claim are analogous to OBCs. And they now dominate state politics without having to form their own party: of 2430 state legislators from 1962 to 2004, 55 per cent were Marathas.

... contd.