They say the tree breaks if it doesn’t bend in a storm—or gets uprooted. An old cliché. Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray knows when to bend and how much, yet stand upright. He won’t be leading the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government in Maharashtra if he didn’t. It’s a coalition of arch-rivals whose ideological fountains spring from completely different fonts of wisdom. Opposites attract but the chief minister’s predecessor, Devendra Fadnavis of the BJP, is confident such friendships don’t last long. “Aisi sarkaren kabhi paanch saal chali hain? (Have such governments ever lasted five years?),” he said in a recent interview. His is not the solitary voice portending the Shiv Sena-Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) government’s premature end. Its downfall, naysayers believe, will come from the internal contradictions within the coalition over the coronavirus crisis and issues before the pandemic.
The Sena chief appears undeterred, despite facing daunting challenges to prove equal to both political and administrative tasks. He completed six months of his tenure, though it was anything but smooth for him. The CM—with no experience in governance, never aspired to take over the reins of the MVA government in the first place—could not have seen it coming when he took oath on November 28 last year. Since then, the 59-year-old leader’s political and administrative acumen has been tested on shifting anvils. Arresting the exponential spike in COVID-19 cases; tackling the humanitarian crisis triggered by the exodus of migrant workers; plugging cracks within the coalition; handling Cyclone Nisarga. Not to speak of the mob lynching of sadhus in Palghar and the prolonged uncertainly over his election to the legislative council.
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