Sukhdev Singh
Over the last few years, political shifts under pressure or for profit, the practice of calling each other black instead of presenting themselves clean, and the use of money, power, and the state machinery to win elections rather than bringing and practicing any systemic policy to address the state issues by the political parties in Punjab have been rampant. Election after election, populist promises have been made. Since independence, the Congress and the SAD have been alternating in power until 2022, after which the AAP has been in control; in the future, the BJP is impatient to take the reins of the state.
The Congress and the SAD have been offering freebies, which the AAP has added to instead of creating meaningful employment and enacting a minimum wage law. The practice of freebies conflicts with the Punjabi ethos of ‘earn with both hands and share your earnings with others,’ diluting a positive cultural value of the state. The central government of the BJP proposes to industrialize agriculture in Punjab and disengage a large chunk of 35-40% of the population engaged in it without bringing a solid and reliable policy for alternative occupation to absorb such a disengaged population; yet it hopes to form a government in the state in 2027.
Instead of offering any long-term structural solutions to unemployment, inequality, climate change, eroding groundwater levels, compromised education and health services, and other religio-cultural issues in the state, the national and regional BJP leaders are offering “double engine Sarkar,” which means the people must elect the BJP to receive any gains from the central pool. Further, it has promised to enact an “anti-(religious) conversion law” if elected, although it has recently triggered a storm in state politics by engineering a large-scale political conversion, i.e., defection not only of six Punjab Rajya Sabha MPs of AAP but also of several other prominent political leaders from other political parties. It has also practiced conversions from the families of the prominent leaders of other political parties.
The response from the AAP and earlier the Congress, which have experienced the staggering blow of political conversions, i.e. defections too is not politically mature and meaningful for the State and its people. Instead of recognising its inadequate selection of candidates for the Rajya Sabha, the AAP has chosen to stage protests against the party offices of the BJP giving them a victim card, instead.
It was actually ingratitude of the AAP high command to the people of Punjab to nominate ‘political sophomores’ from other states to the most powerful positions in the State and Rajya Sabha, letting down many people of high calibre in the State. None of them has delivered in formulating any policy or generating resources, or creating a political discourse for solving the State issues.
Ironically, before defecting from the AAP to the BJP, Raghav Chadha, the AAP Rajya Sabha member, had condemned the BJP as “a party of goons” and “a washing machine” to wash the crimes of those it converted from other political parties. There is a lot to interpret in such remarks by Raghav Chadha as well as the BJP celebration of his conversion to it. The seamy side of political conversion as a quid pro quo is personified by the stormy ED raid on an AAP Rajya Sabha member before his conversion and its silence after the conversion. These members have justified their defection, citing suffocation in the mother party without any explanation of what they mean by suffocation in the absence of any pro-people agenda offered by them. It was not the pro-people that they wanted to implement, but they were forced not to; Sanddep Pathak enjoyed a great political clout, while Raghav Chadha enjoyed great comfort and power without holding any constitutional position in the State. They were tipped to be Rajya Sabha for no hard work by them, but with the hope that they would work for the people. But to them, their ‘suffocation” was a priority over the suffocation of the people of Punjab under their weight.
At another level, the central investigating agencies, the Central Bureau of Investigation and Enforcement Directorate, have been active in Punjab to unearth corruption in the State; yet the credibility of purpose remains in question until it is proved otherwise. Circumstantially, the raids are allegedly politically motivated against the ruling party in the state to create a discourse of corruption in the State. The raids without any conclusive concrete action, except a trace of some money, are generating a political atmosphere where the ruling party can be solely blamed for it. In such a political circus ‘full of sound and fury signifying nothing’, the people of the State are in no way beneficiaries.
The corruption in Punjab, as well as in other states in India, is actually incontrovertible. So, it is not significant to unearth corruption but to root it out. To root out corruption, a concrete policy and action on it are needed, which, unfortunately, are absent in the dominant political discourse in the State. The political discourse is often reduced to short-term populism, focusing on votes; immediate electoral gains are prioritised over sustainable reforms in the State.
In continuity of ‘saying, saying and only saying but not doing anything’ practice, there is a systemic breakdown as the state’s policies actually exacerbate or reproduce the same problems while the political actors continue calling each other black instead of any evidence of cleaning themselves. With the state machinery working to serve the elite interests, the government fails to serve the general public. Finding the political class and the bureaucracy, at large, corrupt, self-serving and detached from public good, the masses feed on whatever is offered by the political leaders during the elections and by the state before and after elections as freebies. This erodes the dignity in the people while the state passes through three-way poverty: poverty of resources, poverty of consciousness, and poverty of politics.
The Author is Retired Professor, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar
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