Mumbai has been passed over and the school, promoted by a glittering array of big corporates, has gone to Hyderabad. Apparently incentives were not the paramount determinants of the choice of location. When Anil Ambani speaks of the ``vision and organisation'' of the Andhra Pradesh government and Anand Mahindra of the ``triumph of political wisdom over political expediency'', they are emphasising other important factors which influence business decisions. Politicians could pay closer attention to what young business leaders are saying.

For Maharashtra Chief Minister Manohar Joshi the unkindest cut of all came from Bal Thackeray who said Chandrababu Naidu ``moves like a typhoon''. Unkind because Thackeray's attempt to commandeer places in the school for Maharashtri-ans is what probably queered the pitch for Mumbai, the promoters' first choice when they put their ideas to Joshi and Thackeray on May 5. In that case the message in the rejection of Mumbai is that India's Wharton will take the best and the brightest and not politicians' candidates. It is a good advertisement for the school. The loss of the business school is symptomatic of a larger problem in Maharashtra today.

Shiv Sena and BJP politicians lacked experience to start with and have not grown into their jobs in government. They remain in many ways the parish pump politicians they always were. Apart from the Chief Minister himself there is little evidence of administrative abilities and even Joshi is hamstrung by his party boss. When the coalition came to power, Maharashtra was already being challenged by other states for new investment and projects and beginning to lose its position as destination number one.

The Enron affair exposed the amateurishness of the SS-BJP coalition and ought to have taught the new government some valuable lessons. Unfortunately, there has been little sign that the government is wiser for that experience. Politics and self-aggrandisement continue to come before pragmatism and common sense. Consequently, although Maharashtra's physical and human resources still make it a major business destination, many of the statistics show investment is not growing as rapidly as it is in other go-getting states. Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh are pushing ahead faster on a wide front, Punjab, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and perhaps even Uttar Pradesh in some areas. To Thackeray and Joshi these trends are mere grist for the political mill as they engage in a new quarrel about whether Maharashtra is first or fourth in the league. The fact that the government is thrashing about for ways of arresting the downslide in the state's finances is proof of Maharashtra's worsening condition.