'If they come back again, Punjab is done for': Can the Akalis weather an anti-incumbency storm?

Politicians do not usually scold people at campaign rallies. It tends to turn potential voters off. But Sukhbir Singh Badal is no ordinary politician, and these are unhappy times for the deputy chief minister of Punjab.

Standing in the shade of Qila Mubarak, a palace fort that once housed the royal family of Patiala, Sukhbir sounded annoyed. “People of Patiala, are you still ghulam, slaves, to the past?” he said. “The age of Maharajas is long gone. Have you ever seen this ‘maharaja’ walking these streets? And yet you continue to vote for him?”

Sukhbir Singh Badal and his father, Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, control the Shiromani Akali Dal, the political party that has ruled the state for 10 years now. Yet, over that time, Patiala has been firmly opposed to them. The urban assembly constituency has instead been beholden to the descendants of Patiala’s royal family and the SAD’s political opponents: the Congress’ Captain Amarinder Singh, who is leading his party’s campaign, and his wife “Maharani” Preneet Kaur.

This year too, Amarinder Singh is contesting the seat. Standing in front of the small crowd in front of the fort, Sukhbir Singh Badal introduced the Akali candidate the Badals have picked to take on the Captain. “General JJ Singh is the real maharaja here,” Sukhbir Singh Badal said. “Ten lakh people in the Army listened to him. He was their commander. And then he was Governor. He left all of that to walk these streets, and serve you.”.

He added: “You will be doing something wrong if you don’t vote for JJ Singh, people of Patiala. People will lose faith in politics. Why would other netas want to work hard, and come meet and talk to you and do your work, if you keep electing a nikamma neta?”

Panthic tactics

Scolding is one tactic. The Akalis are trying plenty of others.

A representative of the Delhi Sikh Gurudwara Management Committee, who spoke to the audience before Sukhbir Singh Badal, insisted that true Sikhs would look at no other party but the Shiromani Akali Dal – never mind the recent Supreme Court judgment saying politicians could not make religious appeals. The Shiromani Akali Dal has strong religious roots and a general image of being a guardian of Sikh interests.

But while this has assured a small, core vote bank, it has never been enough to win over a majority of the population, more so since the end of the Khalistani movement for a separate Sikh nation has seen the Akalis being transformed into one of a more traditional political party, concerned less with religion than with the promises all political parties have to make.

Development, for example. A pair of comedians doing a routine for the crowd before the politicians turned up in Amritsar also tried to pepper their humour with political bits. “One party says there is a lot of nasha, intoxicants, in the state, they say Punjab has become infamous for nasha. Do you want to know what the Badals are addicted to?” “What?” “Flyovers! Atta dal! ATMs! The shagan scheme! Investment! Is there anything wrong with this addiction?”

A large number of people in the state, which goes to the polls on February 4, would say yes. There is something wrong with the Shiromani Akali Dal. And it doesn’t just have to do with drugs, although the scale of that problem in Punjab and the alleged involvement of the political establishment in the epidemic is deeply disturbing. The Akalis are blamed for not just permitting the spread of drugs to what seems like every other household in the state, but also for profiting from it.

Whither development?

But even if you put the drugs to the side, it is worthwhile looking at the development that the Akalis say they have brought to the state over the course of their 10-year-long tenure in alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party. Punjab, traditionally considered India’s breadbasket and showpiece of the Green Revolution, is a relatively rich state. But it is not nearly as rich as it could be.

A comparison with its neighbour, Haryana, which was cleaved off of Punjab in the decades after Independence, is instructive. When the Badals came to power in 2007, the growth rate for the Gross State Domestic Product was a peppy 9.1%. The first five years of the Badal regime saw this come down to an average of 6.9%. That was better than the Planning Commission’s target of 5.9%, but far behind Haryana’s average growth of 8.8%. In 2014-’15, this fell all the way to 4.9%.

Still there are certainly signs of development, and those are very clearly attributed to the Badals. Step into Amritsar, the state’s most popular destination thanks to the presence of the Sikh’s holy Golden Temple, and you can see what this looks like. Much of the city now features brand new bus stops built on special corridors that are aimed at solving traffic and public transport problems. But most of the stops are being used as parking spots for cars for now, while the few buses that are operational tend to be empty.

Close to the railway station, an elaborate refurbishing of a 125-year-old abandoned colonial hospital was supposed to turn the space into an Urban Haat, complete with a food street and plenty of shopping options. This too stands mostly abandoned.

The most evident of these efforts in Amritsar, however, is in the walkway leading up to Harmandir Sahib, the Golden Temple itself. Streets that were once narrow and messy, like most of the older sections of North Indian cities, have given way to broad paved avenues and buildings that are covered in Jaipur sandstone.

The entryway now features a giant statue of Ranjit Singh, the founder of the Sikh empire, and metal sculptures of soldiers and dancing Punjabis. As The Caravan’s Hartosh Singh Bal described it, “The route and the complex at the end of it can leave one feeling that the shrine has been whisked away from Amritsar into some Disney fantasy.” The government has taken pains to ensure that this overhaul is attributed to Sukhbir Singh Badal, and indeed, anyone asked about it will immediately name the the deputy chief minister.

A few streets away, in the markets hidden behind all the new construction everything looks all the same. Garbage still piles up in the middle of the street, there is still sewage gathering in corners and the buildings are still crumbling. “You can change the look of the place, but you can’t change the people,” said Naresh, a clothes seller who pointed at a pile of trash in front of his shop only a lane or two behind the massive remodeled avenues. “Well actually, maybe you can. That’s what elections are for,” he added with a smile.

Political business

“Don’t take Sukhbir’s name in front of me,” said Yajvir Singh, a 27-year-old who until recently worked in the despatch office of medicine factory. “You’ll only hear swears and abuses.” Yajvir Singh now drives an Ola cab on outstation trips across the state, hoping to make some money until a new government brings more job prospects. He begins every morning watching videos of Facebook Lives posted by Bhagwant Singh Mann, a comedian-turned-Aam Aadmi Party Member of Parliament who uses humour to constantly berate the Akalis for the failures of their tenure.

“Yes they have built that new street in Amritsar, but that’s for tourists, no? Yes, they have built roads all over the state, but those only go so far,” Yajvir Singh said. “The road reaches my town and that they built in the first term. But we still don’t have sewerage. That stopped 2 kilometres away from us, even though they’ve been promising to fix it all this while. You know what the roads are for? Their buses.”

An award-winning investigation by The Tribune two years ago revealed that transport companies associated with the Badals are the dominant player in the private bus sector, and hold a “virtual monopoly” in the luxury bus segment. Whenever people do concede some development brought in by the Badals, it is immediately followed with a reference to their businesses, which now seem to extend into every sector in the state.

Welfare woes

That leaves welfare. Conventional wisdom suggests the Akalis broke the anti-incumbency trend in 2012 thanks to schemes like the atta-dal provision, under which the state provides flour and foodgrain at subsidised rates to poor families. Welfare schemes like this, as well as the overwhelming partisanship of Shiromani Akali Dal leaders in rural areas, have led to the belief that farmers and the poor form a large portion of potential Akali voters.

But Punjab is in the midst of an agrarian crisis, and farmer suicides are as common as a refrain here as they are in states like Maharashtra.

“Farmers are hurt and tired,” said Chanda Singh, a farmer and member of the Kisan Union from Rampura Phul, outside Bathinda. “Ten years of this government, and now suicides are everywhere. What money is being made, is all going to the big private farmers and the Akalis take their cut. Everything is in danger – the yields, the labour, the landholding, the soil, the credit options – and if people try to protest, the Akalis bring out their goondas, or they arrest people. Now they’ve even stopped arresting for protesting and they’ve started putting 307 IPC, the murder charge.”

Anecdotally the unemployment numbers are also high, although the government is not even accurately capturing this data. But the unhappiness is evident.

“Earlier government also allowed the private sector in but the last 10 years has seen them go berserk,” said Jagmail Singh, general secretary of the Lok Morcha Punjab. “Akali companies coming in, government jobs going out to contract workers, small-scale industries destroyed and goondagardi everywhere. Court orders requiring land to be distributed have been ignored, pesticide subsidies turned out to be a huge scam, and no new industry wants to set up here. Is there really any question why people would be angry with the Akalis?”

Angry polity

The anger is palpable and evident in the campaigns of the Akali’s rivals. The Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party spend more time talking about how they will undo the public-private apparatus set up by the Shiromani Akali Dal over the last ten years, than about their own promises. AAP has leaned heavily on its guarantee of handling drugs, in part by insisting it will jail Bikram Singh Majithia, brother-in-law of Sukhbir Badal and a state Cabinet minister who has become the face of the alleged politican-drug peddler nexus.

Nobody seems to actually think that the Shiromani Akali Dal-BJP combine will return to power unless the anti-incumbent vote is so split between the Congress and AAP that the first-past-the-post system gives the Akalis an edge. Opinion polls have mostly suggested a hung assembly, with the Congress and AAP competing for first place, although the Lokniti-CSDS gives the edge to the incumbent alliance.

Chances that the Akalis may come back, even because of vote splitting, prompt Yajvir Singh to echo Sukhbir Badal’s admonishment of the Patiala voters. “If the Akalis do come back, we are in for a bad time. Congress is trying hard – Captain is old and won’t be able to fight again – and AAP is everywhere. They are both working so hard that after even this campaign, if the Badals return to power, do you think anyone else will even try to dislodge them?”