ELECTIONS '98
COMMENTARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

Pawar's Last Hurrah?

There is scarcely anyone in Baramati and Pune who doesn't address Sharad Pawar as 'Saheb'. Even advocate S S Hiremath -- an old friend of the family and chief organiser of the 24-year-old Pawar's first assembly election campaign -- is no exception. "That's how he is popularly known in this area," says the Kannadiga from Bijapur who settled down in his wife's hometown of Baramati in 1952. A day before our visit, Pawar had taken time off from his brief and hectic stay in Pune, to condole the death of Hiremath's wife in his 118-year-old traditional home. The familiar verandah of which had served as his election office in 1967, 1972 and 1977.

"Yeshwantrao Chavan had asked me to prepare Pawar -- then president of the Maharashtra Youth Congress -- for his first election. He had just passed his B Com exam and Y B Chavan was impressed by him," says Hiremath, whose house Chavan visited whenever the latter was in Baramati.

Pawar's father, a secretary in the local co-operative society, earned Rs 250 per month, hardly anything to fund his son's election against the affluent Babulal Kakde. Hiremath, along with local Congress president Ghulam Ali and three other workers, asked the heads of 64 talukas in the area to collect money for Pawar's election. They were told to visit Baramati on Friday -- Bazaar day -- and Sunday to discuss campaign strategy. "We only had two cars then, so we requested students to put up Congress flags on their bicycles. We wrote 82,000 slips for voters and held a rehearsal of sorts 40, 45 days before polling. The voters were persuaded to vote for this young boy," reminisces Hiremath.

On the day of counting -- when a nervous Pawar preferred to stay at home in Kathewadi, 10 km from Baramati -- Hiremath was his nominee in the counting room. "And he won by 15,000 to 18,000 votes."

Today Pawar's home in Kathewadi is a quiet, beautiful and lonely bungalow. A row of eucalyptus and gulmohar trees line the canal running opposite his well kept compound. The man sitting at the edge of the empty swimming pool informs that though 'Saheb' doesn't swim, the pool is filled whenever he instructs him. Seven to eight caretakers look after the house and willingly offer cups of tea in the house, with a Congress-style sitting room. "Saheb informs us a day before he is to arrive and comes once a month or so. But he often spends Diwali here with the family," says Bapu, one of the employees.

One hundred and five km from Pune, the stretch to Baramati is green and pleasant. Sugarcane, pomegranates, grapes, chikoo plantations on either side give a prosperous impression of Pawar's longtime bastion. In his 32-year political career, Baramati has stood by him in every election -- sending him to the state assembly five times and the Lok Sabha twice.

Supporters of the thrice-serving Maharashtra chief minister say if not for him Baramati would have remained just another hick town. It was through his efforts that the town boasts of a strong sugar and milk co-operative movement; Vidya Pratishthan -- a sprawling institute spread over 40 acres which provides education from the kindergarten to the university level; the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation -- which has some 4 to 5 big and 100 to 120 small industries and has created employment; the Krishi Vikas Pratisthan -- which works in the field of agriculture development etc.

"Saheb is like my god," says Dr S B Kharosekar, principal of the Vidya Pratishthan Arts, Science & Commerce College, "This establishment shows his vision. I think he is vision himself."

But many don't share Kharosekar's enthusiasm, and say more than 60 per cent of the region is still unirrigated. "There was a time that maximum tankers of water in the region came to Baramati. In three decades 43 villages still do not have flow irrigation," says district Shiv Sena president Sunil Shinde. Yet, even Pawar's opponents do not deny his commitment towards irrigation in the first ten years of his political life. Both admirers and detractors agree that Pawar worked hard and was sensitive to this basic need of his people. A sound reason which saw him win his subsequent election with ease.

A famine-affected area till 1972, the first canal in Baramati was built by the British in 1880. The canal brought water to 22 villages, but 43 villages still depended on rain water. In the late 1960s, Pawar helped in setting up percolation tanks to collect rainwater in the dry regions with the help of two Australian missionaries. "They used to bring wheat, oil, milk powder from their country and distribute it among the people here. He instead asked them to give the food in return for labour in constructing those tanks. This is how the first tanks were built," says Appasaheb Pawar, chairman of the Baramati Agriculture Trust and Pawar's elder brother by 14 years.

Pointing from a commemorative magazine, he says 289 such tanks were made constructed with the help of Christian aid. It is an association that has in the past prompted the Sangh Parivar to accuse Pawar of being influenced by Christian missionaries. However, Appasaheb explains it was an association brought together by mutual commitment to a common cause. Unsure of the first, he says Ms Skuce -- the second missionary -- a pilot in the Second World War, came to Baramati in 1946. The missionaries did humanitarian work and told people about Christianity.

"They were not aggressive about their religion and worked in cooperation with us. After her companion passed away a couple of years back, Ms Skuce never went back to their house but stayed with my family for a long time," he continues. Now over 80, she left for Australia two months back -- a ritual she has followed every summer."

Baramati stands by him, through thick and thin

Photographs: Jewella C Miranda

The Rediff Specials

Tell us what you think of this feature