Taunted as auto driver, rebellion earns top job

Born into a humble Maratha household from the sleepy village of Dare Tarfe Taam in Satara district in western Maharashtra, Eknath Shinde took up a variety of small-time jobs after his schooling from a local Thane school to support his parents and three siblings.

- Manoj Badgeri

He drove autorickshaws and tempos and also worked in private firms. After his rebellion last week, the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena derisively referred to his background as a rickshaw-driver and taunted him, asking if BJP would give him the top job in the state. But Shinde, who rose from a grassroots-level Shiv Sainik to a key Sena leader, has turned out not only to be the Sena's biggest rebel but the reward for his rebellion has also been big: at the age of 58, he has been anointed as chief minister.

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The village from which the family hails, Dare Tarfe Taam, is a hamlet located 85 km from Satara town and is flanked by the Koyna river. Like most villages in Konkan and south Maharashtra, youngsters from this village migrate to Mumbai and Thane for work. Eknath's father Sambhaji migrated to Thane when Shinde was still in school. The father worked as a supervisor in a box factory in the 1980s, and Eknath, the eldest of four siblings-with brothers Subhash and Prakash and sister Sunita-had to take up work as soon as he had finished his schooling.