To understand Sharad Pawar, one has to comprehend the convulsions Maharashtra has gone through in the last three decades. Whether in power or not, Pawar has remained at the heart of the state’s politics. But there is a slight change perceptible over the years. As long as Congress ideology and politics of power were in tandem, he was supreme. When he disassociated himself from Congress ideology (howsoever nebulous it may have been), he began to lose credibility — emerging merely as a “strongman”.

In the past he inspired confidence, today his every move is seen to be cunning. It is this image makeover that led to a sort of confrontation with the finance ministry, and later with the PMO, when he threatened to boycott the visit to Vidarbha along with the prime minister. Finally he agreed to accompany Dr Manmohan Singh, apparently when his formula for Maharashtra farmers was considered. Whatever be the formula, it would not fully explain the nature of the crisis and how it evolved. For too long the state’s leadership has been fire-fighting, rather than looking at the cause for the frequent fires in rural Maharashtra.

It is difficult to cite the exact point in time when Maharashtra’s peasantry entered a debt trap. The state has never really been agriculture friendly, but the “epidemic” of suicides in rural areas is a recent phenomenon. The Vidarbha region, which the prime minister visits this week, has been ground zero of this suicide wave — an estimated 500 cotton farmers have lost their lives in the last two years alone. Vidarbha has never been so miserable. Not that other parts of Maharashtra are happier. Marathwada, for instance, has seen over 150 suicides in the last few months.

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