Three questions on Maharashtra

One brilliant move might enable you to snatch away power from the strongest. But it takes eternal vigilance-and smarts-to keep it. This is where the Thackerays proved to be a disaster

Questions that arise from the dramatic turn in Maharashtra politics can broadly be put in three baskets: moral, political, and ideological. We shall deal with the moral first and the ideological last. The first will take us the least time and words, and the last one the most.

The morality question on the bulldozing by defection in Maharashtra is easily answered. To begin with, the MVA government itself was born in sin. The Shiv Sena had contested jointly with the BJP against the NCP-Congress combine. After the elections, it defected to the rivals instead. That was amoral, cynical realpolitik, as