SHARAD PAWAR
Sharad Pawar is the quintessential politician. He is a master strategist and a political pragmatist who is wellinformed about his colleagues and his opponents, and a brilliant administrator with an encyclopaedic knowledge of Maharashtra.
He also has a dry sense of humour that he uses cleverly. For instance, when he was asked, for the nth time, whether he was the power behind the throne in Maharashtra, he replied that he was neither the “headmaster” nor the “remote controller” of the Maha Vikas
Aghadi (MVA) government. It was a gentle jibe at Bal Thackeray’s favourite line where he called himself Maharashtra’s remote control. And “headmaster” was a reference to the coaching classes owned by the Shiv
Sena’s Manohar Joshi who was the party’s first Chief Minister.
Pawar’s denial is typical of the man but it is a fact that he is the fulcrum of the MVA government. The
MVA leader, Chief Minister Uddhav
Thackeray, depends on him considerably and especially so when he first took the chair in November 2019.
Pawar combines his vaulting ambition with a strong streak of daring, and this is what led him to create the MVA, an alliance of highly unlikely partners: the Shiv Sena, mercurial street fighters; the