Punjab political parties push election gear to grab power in February 2022 as farmers strive for survival

 

Punjab parties push election gear as farmers strive for survival

Ground Zero

Jagtar Singh

The political discourse has its own logic.

As the remote-controlled Congress government in Punjab headed by Capt Amarinder Singh enters the fifth and the last year, the political parties in this state whose farmers are spearheading the national fight for survival have pushed the election gear. The farmers organisations commanding the struggle against the three contentious laws have so far maintained respectable distance from these parties. Going by the present indications, it is going to be a prolonged fight.

The Amarinder government has launched aggressive media campaign coinciding with its  four years in office while Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal having monopoly power over the party has taken the lead by dramatically announcing his own candidature at a rally in Jalalabad that was his first election mobilisation for February 2022. The Aam Aadmi Party that now provides the much needed third dimension to Punjab’s traditional bi-polar polity entered into the election mode on the crutches of a so-called survey with its Bagha Purana rally of March 21. This survey shows this party in a dominant position in competition with the Congress with the Akali Dal lagging far behind.  It may be recalled that this party had started its campaign in 2017 on the basis of a similar survey claiming 100 seats out of 117. The BJP whose leaders can’t even move out freely now does not matter.

Punjab, at one level, is a junked state. This state desperately new style of governance that can confront the crisis in which it has landed into over the years and the governance is clean, transparent and pro-people.

One must first go back to 2017 that for the first time in an Assembly election, threw up the third dimension with the AAP replacing the Akali Dal-BJP alliance as the main opposition.

However, the tragedy of Punjab is that AAP could not function even as opposition has disintegrated due to internal dynamics rooted in its over-ambitious people. There was no outside force targeting this party.

The Akali Dal blundered at the time when the party should have been hoping for survival in view of the strong anti-incumbency against the Amarinder government. The party wrongly positioned itself in favour of the three farm bills and argued these were in the interest of the farmers. It was a self-inflicted damage. The party broke its alliance as the pressure of the struggle turned intense. The only advantage the party now has is that the people’s anger against it has somewhat sub-sided.

Punjab with the highest per capita income at one time, is now among the laggards. If thousands of youth from this border state had not sought greener pastures overseas, the unemployment problem would have been the worst but it is still acute. Punjab is not a favoured destination for the capital that has resulted in lack of opportunities. The political parties resort to only rhetoric without coming up with any long term concrete programme for revival. Of course, the ruling class is getting richer and richer after every election.

The governance that has been introduced in Punjab is unique in India. It is remote governance. The chief minister does not function from the chief minister’s office on the second floor of the Punjab Civil Secretariat, the seat of the government. Even the press room on this floor remains deserted.

The remote governance started in 2002 when Capt Amarinder Singh formed the government. He was replaced by the Akali Dal government headed by Parkash Singh Badal in 2007 and that last two terms. He finally inducted his son Sukhbir Singh Badal as the deputy chief minister who functioned as the de-facto chief minister.

Badals too succumbed to the remote governance model despite the fact that both father and son would go to the field for Sangat Darshan programme to directly connect with the people. But this has nothing to do with style of administration.

Their visits to the secretariat would be few. That model has now attained perfection. Capt Amarinder Singh, of course, has the reputation of being decisive.

Nothing would have suited this model of governance than Covid. Work from home is the model dictated by Covid. It was already there in this state.

There is no difference between the Congress and the Akali Dal so far as the governance model is concerned.

The discourse under every government is the same. It is corruption and drugs. It is said that every government in this state is more corrupt than the previous one. The sources of making money too are the same.

It is for this reason that the space for third dimension has always been vacant in this state for the last more than a decade. The people had expected AAP to fill that space but failed.

That space continues to be vacant. 

Now the problem is all the more acute in the context of farmers struggle that basically is for dignified living. The new farm laws are not only antifarmer but also antipeople.

This struggle is likely to overshadow the electoral discourse despite the fact that the farmers organisations have maintained distance from the established political parties. However, no struggle can be in isolation from the political dynamics.

Can any party give some hope in the coming months to the people in this jinxed state and deal with the deepening crisis head-on? If the AAP government in Delhi can cut the power bill to half, why should the rates in Punjab continue to spiral?

The present ruling class is corrupt and degenerated. That is the basic problem.

It is to be seen whether the farmers struggle can dictate the emergence of new politics or not. One should hope for the best.