In Takadi Deshmukh, a village in the Parli assembly constituency of Maharashtra’s Beed district, Sunita Bhandare and neighbour Lata Balad sit in the latter’s brick-walled house. Life is tough for the two women, who struggle to get by because of the constant drought and increasingly low crop yield.
Even during this Dusshera, the mood of the village, with about 600 voters (mostly OBC), was sombre. Sunita, who has three blind children below 10, asks: “What is there to celebrate?”
In Tokwadi, an adjoining village, the situation is better. The village has close to 3,500 voters from various communities, including Vanjaris and Marathas, and there is visible development. It got a tarred road a year ago, has a school with 360 children, and has benefited from the ‘one house, one toilet’ programme.
However, most of this happened in the past year, probably with a eye on the elections. “Whatever it is, it is good,” says Mahadev Dnyanov Mugle, a driver in his 30s who stays in a colony where the majority are from the scheduled castes.
People in Parli weigh their words while talking of the two cousins about to contest the assembly election here—BJP’s sitting MLA Pankaja Munde and Dhananjay Munde of the Nationalist Congress Party. “Both are working,” says Mugle.
Sunita and Lata recall the recent Ganpati festival when Pankaja’s sister, Beed MP Pritam Munde visited the village. As did Dhananjay’s wife, Rajshri. “Vahini (sister-in-law) came and chatted with us and helped us,” says Sunita. “But they both have been working,” adds Lata. “They both are family.”
People in Parli—a taluka with one town, 105 villages and a population of 2,87,208, as per the 2011 census—equate the fight to a modern-day Mahabharat. They concede that neither cousin is evil, but say the fight is getting more intense each day.
“After all, they both learnt politics from the same person (Gopinath Munde, Pankaja’s father and Dhananjay’s uncle, who died in 2014),” says 69-year-old R.S. Geetay Nandgaol, who had contested on a Jan Sangh ticket in 1967. Though he praises Dhananjay for his keenness to help people and his work for the constituency, he says the tide favours Pankaja.
As for the youth in Parli, opportunity seems to be a key issue. Amol Pagare, 18, appreciates gas cylinders reaching homes on time and the construction of toilets, but is disappointed at the lack of job opportunities, the incomplete railway line and the growing crime rate. He says that the plan to have the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) start projects here would help in a big way.
“I have [conducted] a survey on how MIDC would work,” says Pankaja, sitting in her residential office in Parli. “It will only work when you have connections like railway and highways. Then, you should have water. In the past four years, we have continuously had drought. But we took that as an opportunity and built national highways. My own constituency, Parli, is now on the national highway. And, we will be done with the railway line in a year.” She adds that, because of the work her party has done, there is no anti-incumbency.
Dhananjay, expectedly, disagrees. He told a newspaper in August, “In the past four years, the farmers have been facing drought and this has resulted in more farmer suicides. There is a buildup of anger and this unrest will dethrone this government.”
Says Baba Saheb Atma Saheb Katle, a farmer-turned driver: “Pankaja is getting votes because people loved her father. Another reason is that people know she has the support of the Central and state governments. Otherwise, it is Dhananjay who works for the people at the ground level. Dhananjay is more like Gopinathji, approachable. It takes hours to meet Pankaja.”
In 2014, Pankaja beat Dhananjay by 25,895 votes. And she is confident that the Modi wave—which villagers say helped her win—is stronger now. “A lot of people believe we need a secure government,” she says. “And, if you have Central support, the state government flourishes and does well.”