Do the defectors realise that videos of them dancing, cutting cakes, partying, and generally having a good time while Maharashtra stagnates and Assam drowns is not exactly good PR for their cause of overturning a state government by subterfuge?
I am beginning to have doubts about Shinde’s leadership. Or his handlers. I mean, what are they thinking when releasing these videos? And here I thought the BJP was good at optics. The people who are seeing this are finding it increasingly difficult to continue backing or defending those that are now slowly revealing themselves to be mercenaries and traitors rather than rebels with a cause. That can’t be good. For anyone. Except, of course, the BJP.
Or is this a double bluff and the exact kind of optics the BJP wants? Is there a deeper game afoot, where the eventual humiliation of the SS MLAs (bad publicity+bad legal advice+bad timing+bad strategy) is the final desired endgame?
I am a novice (not even that) in front of Amit Shah and Sharad Pawar, the two ‘Maharathis‘ who are actually playing this game, as the CM of Maharashtra, his party, and his MLAs serve as pieces on the board, to be traded, exchanged, promoted, sacrificed, and finally, put back in the box at the end, and so, I shall not dare to speculate what exactly is happening here.
That said, I don’t know whether they are even playing the same game I think they are playing. While I (like everyone else) might be thinking they are squaring off on the opposite sides of a chessboard, it might be checkers they are actually at. Or something totally different, like bridge or poker.
We bystanders can only look at the table and try to (vainly) second guess the best players in the world, or at least in India for sure, sparring and matching wits.
