UNDERSTANDING RAJ THACKERAY

The easiest thing to do with Raj Thackeray is to hate the guy. And there are a large number of Bombay Scottish educated, Colaba-residing Bombayiites who do that. And much of that anger and hatred is justified. But the more difficult thing is to try and make sense of him. Why does he tick? Why is he so popular and who is voting for him?

Let’s just get the bare numbers out first. Because numbers don’t lie. And numbers cannot be partisan. And numbers definitely don’t speak Marathi or Bhojpuri. Numbers will help us understand the Raj Thackeray phenomenon.

In the last Lok Sabha elections, the MNS contested only 12 seats. In each of those, except one, it polled more than one lakh votes. In the Mumbai-Thane region, which accounts for about nine seats, the MNS polled as much as 21 percent of the votes. Meaning, one in five voted for Raj Thackeray. And this in a Lok Sabha election where the chances of his candidates winning is slimmer than what it would be in an Assembly election.

There is clearly a constituency that he’s appealing to. And mind you, as the CSDS post-poll study showed, Raj is not just taking away traditional Sena-BJP votes. That’s the biggest myth floating around. That Raj Thackeray is dividing the saffron vote and hence helping the Congress and NCP. Muslim youths have voted for him. Dalits have. And so have women. These are not traditional Sena constituencies. These are traditional Congress votebanks. How does one explain this?

Interestingly, unlike his uncle, Raj has never positioned himself as a crusader for Hindus alone. He has carefully projected himself to be a pin-up boy for the entire Marathi multitude. And therein lies his political acumen.

There’s a definite vacuum in Maharashtra’s politics today. There’s no political entity or figure that traditional middle-class young Marathis relate to. And by traditional Marathis, I mean the sons and daughters of erstwhile mill-workers, government clerks, teachers and intellectuals. The Sena no longer appeals to them. They don’t figure in the priorities of the Congress and NCP. So who do they turn to? Naturally, it’s this vacuum that Raj has successfully managed to occupy.

And the Shiv Sena has only itself to blame for allowing this Frankenstein to grow. It’s easy to blame the Congress-NCP for feeding and fostering the MNS. But part of the reason for the MNS’ appeal lies in the Sena’s own failings.

The BJP-Shiv Sena has been the worst opposition in the history of Maharashtra. For ten years, they have allowed an absolutely insipid, imbecile government to stumble from one failure to another.

More than 2 million Maharashtrians lost jobs even before the recession. The state languishes third from the bottom in terms of number of people living below the poverty line. Only UP and Bihar are worse. 40,000 farmers have committed suicide since 1995. And to top it all, the state is reeling under a combined debt of 1.5 lakh crores, the highest in the country.
Yet the BJP-Sena’s complete cloddishness has made the Congress & NCP look like angels. And it’s this empty opposition space that Raj is trying to corner. Love him or hate him, the Thackeray cub is here to stay. Jai Maharashtra!

(P.S. By the way, Karan Johar does owe all of us a collective apology. Not for using the term Bombay. But for making such a lousy film. Downright trash.)