The most unexpected thing I brought back from Baramati was not a memory. It was a question about how we judge political leadership.
For almost 40 years, Pune has been my home, yet Baramati—barely 100 kilometres away—remained a place I had never visited. I finally went there recently for a teacher-training programme, and what surprised me had nothing to do with the training. The moment I entered Baramati, I was struck by the roads, cleanliness and planning. In places, the road inside Baramati seemed better than the Pune-Solapur Highway that brought me there, and the comparison with the Pune-Mumbai Expressway did not seem exaggerated. There were well-maintained gardens, walking spaces, fountains and public bus stops that were better than many I have seen in Pune or Mumbai. What surprised me most was seeing children and young people using a dedicated skateboarding facility. For a moment, I genuinely wondered: Is this really India? I have visited Amanora and Magarpatta in Pune countless times, yet Baramati made me realise that good urban infrastructure and civic planning are not necessarily the monopoly of large metropolitan cities.
Naturally, I began asking the teachers I was training about the transformation I was seeing. Almost unanimously, the answer was, “Dada.” Ajit Pawar. They spoke of his intense involvement in Baramati's development and his insistence on personally keeping track of things. I cannot independently verify every story I heard, but I could see the outcome. And that forced me to confront something about my own perception of him. I have always liked his direct style of speaking, his ability to manage political conflicts and certain aspects of his political pragmatism. But my opinion of him had also been coloured by the controversies and allegations surrounding his political career. Then I saw Baramati—and suddenly my opinion became more complicated.
An uncomfortable thought crossed my mind: If a politician is involved in corruption but develops his constituency to this extent, does the development make the corruption less objectionable? My answer, intellectually, has to be no. Corruption cannot become acceptable because roads are built, gardens are created or infrastructure improves. Public money is public money, and accountability cannot be negotiated. But there is another equally uncomfortable question: what about politicians who neither govern effectively nor transform their constituencies, yet continue to receive our loyalty because of party, ideology, identity or rhetoric? Why do we judge politicians so often by what they say, what they are accused of or which party they represent, but so rarely by what has actually changed on the ground?
Baramati did not make me a supporter of Ajit Pawar, nor did it erase the questions surrounding him. It did something more important—it made me question my own certainty. Development deserves recognition; corruption deserves accountability. One cannot cancel the other. Perhaps that is how we should judge public leadership: not by admiration or hatred, not merely by allegations or political affiliations, but by evidence—what is legally established, what is actually delivered and what difference a leader makes to the lives of the people he represents. I went to Baramati for a professional assignment. I returned with a civic question—and perhaps with a slightly more informed, and certainly less certain, opinion.
