There is ‘good news’ for the beneficiaries of the Ladki Bahin Yojana in Maharashtra. The government has announced it will not ask for cash back from those ‘ineligible women’ whose accounts were credited up until January 2025.

This isn’t large-heartedness. The fact is: the government can’t recover the amount. Having issued the order to pay all applicants, eligible or not, at the rate of Rs 1,500 per month since August 2024, it cannot now blame the women and ask for ‘refunds’. Another reason is impending local body elections, where the ruling Mahayuti coalition hopes to consolidate its position.

Meanwhile, some unpopular decisions have been taken. A 15 per cent increase in bus fares, with proportionate hikes in taxi and auto fares, has been announced. The excise department has been tasked to meet the target of mopping up Rs 30,500 crore before the financial year ends in March.

Having swung a comfortable majority in the assembly election, the coalition reckons it can afford to collect more taxes to reduce the fiscal and revenue deficit (which was estimated last financial year at Rs 1.10 lakh crore and Rs 20,000 crore respectively).

Brakes are being put on populist schemes rolled out for women and farmers as pre-poll doles. Even as newly identified ineligibles are being requested to ‘voluntarily surrender’ the amounts they were ‘mistakenly’ paid, they are being threatened with consequences if official agencies like the Income Tax department call them out.

According to minister Aditi Tatkare, as many as three million women were ineligible for the Ladki Bahin scheme, each of whom received Rs 10,500 by January 2025. The finance department’s figures are double that at six million. From April 2025, beneficiaries were promised Rs 2,100 per month, which explains the hurry to eliminate the ineligible.

The government also admits that 1.2 million ineligible farmers have received benefits under the PM Kisan Yojana and as much as Rs 4,000 crore are to be recovered from them. Bureaucrats are now being pressurised to recover the amounts.

Questions have arisen about the crop insurance scheme for farmers introduced in the 2023 budget, where farmers could insure their crops by paying just Re 1. BJP MLA Suresh Dhas alleged this was a Rs 350-crore scam.

Agriculture minister Manikrao Kokate has admitted that irregularities were detected in the implementation of the scheme, with even places of worship shown as agricultural land to avail of the insurance. More than four lakh crop insurance applications had been rejected, some filed by people living outside Maharashtra. Maharashtra’s reputation of being among the better administered states is now in shambles.

Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis scored a self-goal last month. He travelled to the World Economic Forum’s annual jamboree in Davos, Switzerland, where he signed multiple MoUs with a host of companies. After all, that’s why chief ministers and Union ministers travel to Davos — to project India’s ‘growing economy’ and attract foreign investment.

The chief minister’s office gushed about ‘61 transformative MoUs across all sectors and regions! Rs 15.70 lakh crore worth of investment secured with promise of generating employment for 1.6 million people in the state’. Wow! But that wasn’t enough. Fadnavis couldn’t resist the temptation of posting photographs with corporate honchos — most of whom turned out to be from India!

In other words, many of those ‘transformative MoUs’ could very well have been signed at home. He did address a press conference in Davos, where no one, including Indian TV channels like Network18, NDTV and India Today, asked questions on promises made on earlier trips to Davos.

He even took a walk with TV anchor Rahul Kanwal, which was just another way of taking us for a ride.

‘Enroute Zurich!’ Fadnavis posted on 23 January, along with ‘awesome pictures’ with a glistening high-speed train. ‘Riding on the fast track in Davos, just like the rapid growth we’re driving in Maharashtra!’ With a bunch of other photos, he wrote, ‘Danke Davos! This is an incredible milestone in Maharashtra’s journey! Couldn’t have asked for more... Thank you #WEF25!’

Mumbaikars reacted with irate comments and damning photos of women jostling to get into Mumbai’s local trains, traffic snarls, broken footpaths and garbage on the streets. One wrote, ‘So when he returns and sees the ugly hoardings and filth on the streets and bumps his way to Mantralaya across our pathetic crowded roads, will he want to improve things?’ Another incensed Mumbaikar posted, ‘Enough of picnic on tax payer expense. If you’ve updated your Swiss bank passbook, come back and get the roads cleared of encroachment and flex boards.’

One of the politer responses went, ‘After walking at railway stations in Zurich and Davos, it might be good to walk Ghatkopar and Thane stations also and replicate the same look, quality and efficiency. Or at the very least ensure that the contractors holding existing work orders don’t do a shoddy job and are able to lay the tiles next to each other, besides a few other basics’. In other words, Fadnavis’ social media PR attempt flopped, and his attempt to pass off a junket as an ‘important milestone’ was junked.

The RSS shed the veneer of an unregistered ‘cultural organisation’ dedicated to character-building years ago.

RSS volunteers, affiliates and pracharaks are legion — installed in Raj Bhavans, universities, acting as ‘independent directors’ in companies, as ‘consultants and advisors’ in ministries and PSUs... Even so, BJP state president Chandrashekhar Bawankule’s announcement that RSS volunteers are being appointed as PAs (personal assistants) and OSDs (officers on special duty) to ministers in the state has caused some mild surprise. The surprise lies in Bawankule’s rationale: these RSS nominees would keep a leash on the wrongdoings, if any, of ministers and bureaucrats.

Last week, the state government amended rules related to the appointment of outsiders in the government, especially in ministerial offices. The first list of the new appointments is said to have been cleared by the chief minister. Sudhir Deulgaonkar, an OSD in the office of Union transport minister Nitin Gadkari, is set to be the main coordinator between the party and the government.

Bawankule appealed to party workers to stay in touch with the new appointees and keep them ‘updated’ about the upcoming local body elections. With no qualifications, eligibility and criteria for their selection, it’s clearly ideological commitment to the Sangh Parivar that is the determining factor. Finally, the distinction between the RSS and the government has been obliterated in the state where it all started.