LIVE EXCHANGE OF FUTURES & OPTIONS IN MAHA POLLS

This week, voters in Maharashtra have a date with democracy. The verdict will set the tone of national politics as it unveils a parade of epitaphs and obituaries on politicos and parties.

- SHANKKAR AIYAR Author of The Gated Republic, Aadhaar: A Biometric History of India's 12 Digit Revolution, and Accidental India (shankkar.aiyar

Maharashtra matters beyond the parameters of seats in the Lok Sabha and the size of its GDP. It is the hub of soft power and hard cash. It hosts India's commercial capital, but more critically, Maharashtra has illuminated the process of political venture capitalism. Mirroring the cinematic world, political regimes in the state have migrated from solo starrers to multi-starrers. Parties in the state validate the cliché 'politics is the art of the possible'.

Maharashtra has designed and re-designed the political idiom—it has been a trend-setter of sorts. In the 1970s, over a dozen parties came together as Sharad Pawar defined political agility. In 1995, Bal Thackeray and Pramod Mahajan engineered the template for sharing the spoils of war. In 1999, warring divorcees NCP and Congress hooked up again to clinch power, and since 2019, the parties have redefined the concept of political fidelity.

In a sense, this week the state's voters have a blind date with democracy. After all, in the past five years, the pathway to power wasn't crafted in EVMs, but in the political stock exchange. The lexicon defines futures as a contract obliging the buyer to buy or sell an asset at a specified date, while options give the buyer the right but imposes no obligation to buy or sell an asset. All bets are on the table. Maharashtra is verily a live laboratory, an open political exchange for exercising futures and options, for possible mergers and expedient acquisitions.