What is it with the Devendra Fadnavis Government that it has made a habit of hitting the headlines for all the wrong reasons? Instead of focusing on the more pressing tasks, the young Chief Minister has allowed the peripheral and the frivolous to hold centrestage. At a time when the state is in the grip of one of the worst droughts, Fadnavis is seen visiting foreign shores on rather flimsy grounds. In nine months as chief minister, he has already been on six foreign trips. Yes, he will protest that these tours were undertaken for the sake of greater good but the truth is that if he wanted to, he could have skipped all of them. Admitted that all his predecessors too had gone on several such foreign jaunts, but it was expected that he would break fresh ground, set a new paradigm by shunning the usual temptations most politicians are prone to fall prey to while in power. We are disappointed. Whether or not he understands it, the truth is that in the age of 24×7 media, he stands in danger of losing the enormous goodwill with which he had started his innings as CM. He must begin to get a grip on the administration. The current drift in the government is neither good for him nor for his party which had preferred him for the CM’s post though more senior leaders were eyeing the job. To begin with, Fadnavis must sort out the problem with his coalition partner. The daily public recriminations and sniping by the Sena only underlines the cracks in the administration and the disarray at the top in the ruling coalition. Instead of shying away from catching the Sena bull by its horns, he should confront it frontally and must insist on laying a few ground rules for the coalition partners the breach of which should attract stern action. If the Sena wants to wreck the coalition from inside, Fadnavis should call its bluff. It cannot enjoy the fruits of power and yet snipe at the government openly on one issue or the other. This is totally against the tenets of coalition dharma. Coalition partners working at cross purposes should be unacceptable. It certainly does not make for good governance. Remaining locked in a bad marriage is not good for the future of both partners, which brings us to the latest non-issue that has offered the Sena factions another opportunity to snipe at the BJP publicly. Of course, it should be no business of any government as to what the people eat or do not eat. In this day and age, the Government cannot enforce its own culinary choices on the people. Never mind that the ban on meat was first introduced by the Congress Party. Since then, the food habits and public attitudes have changed enormously. Banning meat for the sake of the Jain community can invite similar demands from other religious minorities. Even if the self-certified secularists in Kerala had for long put in place a ban on mid-day meal schools in the Muslim-dominated districts during the holy month of Ramadan, the BJP ought to be sensitive to the liberal public opinion instead of pandering to the few backwoodsmen who refuse to move with the times. Earlier, the decision to ban the sale of beef in Maharashtra was equally questionable. In this day and age, preventing people to eat what they want is neither possible nor desirable. If there has to be a ban on beef it has to be nation-wide; otherwise, it is just not possible to enforce it.
Indeed, the sale and consumption of liquor is known to be far more harmful to human health than eating beef. But because prohibition has been found to be a futile exercise the world over, most governments have used the sale of liquor to garner maximum revenue possible rather than try and ban its sale. But more than these bans, the CM should concern himself fully with the worst drought in half a century, in parts of the state. Even if the previous governments failed to do anything about the problem, Fadnavis should do, and should be seen to be doing, something concrete to alleviate the misery of the farming community on a durable basis. The concentration of sugar mills in a drought-prone area further adds to the woes of the small land-holders. Admittedly, there are several imponderables but the voters had elected the BJP hoping that it would not make the same mistakes the previous Congress-NCP governments had made. Unfortunately, Fadnavis has failed to prove that he is different from his predecessors. He must change while there is still time.
