Haze over the city is a portent – both climatic and political

The urban poor bear the brunt of extreme climate change events despite their carbon footprint being the lowest

- SMRUTI KOPPIKAR

As the new Mahayuti government was sworn in on Thursday evening at Mumbai's historic Azad Maidan, the temperature hovered around 32°C, a sharp drop of nearly five points over the previous day but still quite high for the month. It had nothing to do with the sizzling negotiations between the alliance partners of the Mahayuti or the rising infuriation of Eknath Shinde who was forced to be deputy to chief minister Devendra Fadnavis of the BJP. Quite a role reversal there. Shinde, who did not want to listen to his party leader, Shiv Sena's Uddhav Thackeray, in 2022 had to meekly comply with the BJP's high command.

There was a haze around the city too. There has been for a few days in the lead-up to the swearing-in of Fadnavis as the chief minister, and Shinde and Ajit Pawar as deputy chief ministers. This is not to suggest that the haze had anything to do with the non-transparent and protracted negotiations between the alliance partners but it hung heavy. Sections of the city's skyline disappeared as if in a 1960s Bollywood black-and-white whodunit, its spanking new bridges and roads in the sea were lost to sight and morning light was so listless and dull that the filters in posh phones could not help.

The haze might lift and the air might turn cooler as December rolls on. The political landscape may clear up too. We will see if Shinde, diminished and hurting, has tricks up his sleeve to show who's the boss or the duo of Fadnavis-Ajit Pawar, immensely experienced and shrewd players of the political game, are able to pull the rug from beneath Shinde's feet. But it's high time that they all move into the governance mode now.