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. 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.
New CM a staunch Sainik who almost gave up politics
Eknath Shinde's anointment as chief minister is a spectacular rise for a hardcore Sainik who at one point almost gave up politics owing to a personal tragedy. 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. The jobs were all humble, and after Eknath’s marriage to Lata, the family continued to stay in a small settlement in the Kisan Nagar area of Thane. Here, Shinde was introduced to social service and politics and was inspired by Shiv Sena pramukh Balasaheb Thackeray, so he joined the Sena, said his brother Prakash, who was formerly a corporator in the Thane civic corporation.
Shinde’s mentor and Sena leader from Thane, Anand Dighe, spotted the spark in him as he watched him execute every assignment with his daredevil approach. Shinde’s loyalty towards the party led Dighe to encourage him to join active politics. He contested the Thane corporation election from the Wagle Estate ward for the first time in 1997 and won by a considerable margin. “Dighe saheb always used to assign me difficult jobs, and I used to take it as a challenge to execute them. This trust helped me do my best for him,” Shinde had once said.
In a freak mishap in 2000, Shinde lost his two young children to a drowning incident in his native village. The tragedy left him shattered, and he had nearly made up his mind to quit politics. However, Dighe gave him comfort and encouraged him to accept society as a whole as his family, anointing him as leader of house in the Thane civic corporation. The suggestion worked. People were soon flocking to Shinde’s office in the municipal body. “During his tenure as leader of house, there used to be a huge crowd outside his office to meet him and get issues resolved. His office would be teeming with people till late in the night, unlike any other government office that shuts by evening,” said Vilas Joshi, a long-time associate of Shinde.
Soon his work attracted the attention of Bal Thackeray at Matoshree, who elevated him as the Thane district chief after Dighe’s death in 2001. Following his term in the Thane corporation, Shinde got the opportunity to contest the 2004 assembly elections from Thane, which he won by a decent margin. He has continued his victorious streak till date, having been elected as MLA for four terms and appointed cabinet minister in 2014 and 2019. Shinde has held the vital urban development and public works portfolios during his tenure as minister in the past.
In this role he was instrumental in executing several crucial projects for the state like the Samruddhi Expressway, the Sewri Transharbour link and the cluster redevelopment project for Thane, among others. His followers talk of Shinde’s leadership qualities, saying he led from the front even in times of disaster and emergencies. “Whether participating in the rescue operations during the Chiplun or Kolhapur floods or the rescue of stranded passengers on a marooned train in Badlapur in 2020, Shinde saheb reached out and extended support. There were times when the administration was worried, but Shinde’s presence acted as a booster,” Joshi said.
To underline Shinde’s sense of commitment, his colleagues state the example of his visit to the civil hospital in Thane during the pandemic after several staff members and patients were losing morale. “Shinde donned a PPE kit and decided to enter the Covid ward. He interacted with patients and the staff. The result was that the mood in the ward turned hopeful, and everyone resolved to fight the virus,” said a doctor at the hospital. Thane, by the way, would be hoping big, because it has got its first CM.