Think like an investor. Will you choose a shaky stock to invest your hard-earned money or go to a state where political turmoil is at its peak to set up your multi-billion greenfield park? This is what seems to have happened to Maharashtra’s ambition of retaining the R1.54 lakh crore semiconductor plant of the Vedanta-Foxconn joint venture. Going by their respective claims, both political outfits, the previous Maha Vikas Aghadi and the Bharatiya Janata Party-Eknath Shinde Sena that took over reigns on the last day of June, have done their best to influence the investor with good and better packages. The exercise didn’t work, apparently because the JV took up Gujarat’s offer and announced its location in the neighbouring state, which according to the Opposition’s claims, has offered the JV at least R12,000 crore less in its incentive package than Maharashtra’s. The Vedanta chairman Anil Agarwal was profuse in thanking PM Narendra Modi whose state he has chosen to be in with the massive investment. Why would an investor of this size pull out from a state where the PM belongs? For an investor, it is an ideal position to be in. Political skirmishes that his decision triggered aren’t the investor’s problems. 

It needs to be treated as a great concern by all power-worthy parties in Maharashtra, for it is they who have created it, and they are responsible for amending it. Isn’t it the time for all parties to introspect for the sake of the people of Maharashtra they claim to have been doing their politics for?