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.
This story is from the June 15, 2020 edition of Outlook.
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This story is from the June 15, 2020 edition of Outlook.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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