Every time a change has been contemplated at the helm of the Maharashtra government, Prithiviraj Chavan’s name has invariably cropped up as the most non-controversial choice. On Thursday, after several near-misses, he will finally take charge at Mumbai’s Mantralaya. Without a doubt, it was his clean image that swung the
decision his way: the criteria was clearly spelt out by AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi who said the next CM should be a person who was “clean, impeccable and able to deliver”. There is no doubt about his credentials in this respect. Mr Chavan comes from a family with a reputation for integrity: his father, a lawyer who was returned to Parliament many times, was known to be strict and upright, and it is said that when Prithviraj was to go to America for higher studies there were no new shoes for him and the old ones were repaired. There is an even quainter story that reflects the family’s image: when his mother Premalakaki succeeded his father as an MP following his death, she went to borrow `10,000 from a bank for her son’s (Prithiviraj) weddings. The bank only gave loans for girls’ marriages but made an exception in her case due to the family’s impeccable reputation!
Maharashtra will be blessed to have a clean CM particularly after corruption reached a pinnacle under his predecessor. It was said that corruption had become so institutionalised that those who committed irregularities could easily get these “regularised” simply by paying a penalty. This permeated almost every field of life — from business to education, health and slum rehabilitation. Mr Ashok Chavan is in fact the third chief minister forced to resign under a cloud of corruption. Mr Prithviraj Chavan, being a Rajya Sabha member, will need to get elected to the Assembly within six months of his appointment. If this proves a problem, he could even secure a seat in the Legislative Council. But this is nothing compared to his immediate task — to call it Herculean might appear to be an understatement. Hercules’ fifth task, legend has it, was to clean in one day the Augean stables that had 1,000 cattle but had never been cleaned — and he is said to have accomplished this by rerouting the Alpheus and Peneus rivers to wash out the filth. One has no idea how Mr Chavan plans to tackle corruption, and rein in the powerful builders’ lobby which had of late had a free run of both Mumbai city and the state of Maharashtra. The first order of business is, of course, to order a full-fledged and transparent investigation into all aspects of the Adarsh Housing Society scam which proved to be his predecessor’s nemesis.
Mr Chavan has the advantage of enjoying the confidence of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, with whom he has worked closely for a long time, as well as of both Sonia and Rahul Gandhi. He will need all of that to handle the affairs of a state where many still consider him an “outsider”. His family has been settled in Delhi for decades, ever since the time his father had served as an MP, and he will thus have to tread extremely cautiously through the political minefields in Maharashtra — represented by rival factions of the state Congress. He would do well not to get too identified with any of these and interact with all sections in the state, particularly with civil society, to get a feel of the people’s problems before trying to tackle them. He will also have a new deputy chief minister, as the NCP has replaced Mr Chhagan Bhujbal with Sharad Pawar’s nephew Ajit Pawar, the state irrigation minister. All in all, Maharashtra can look forward to interesting days ahead.