Amarinder stirs the Punjab pot

IT may be a bit of a stretch to compare senior BJP leader Capt Amarinder Singh with either Lenin or Napoleon, both of whom are variously supposed to have acknowledged that they became the leaders they did because they had seized the day.

Lenin, upon his return from London to St Petersburg in 1917, is famously believed to have commented that he found power lying on the streets of St Petersburg and all he did was to pick it up. The Russian Revolution, which changed the face of Russia and large parts of the world, followed. Just over a hundred years before, in 1815, while in exile in St Helena, Napoleon had remonstrated with his close confidant, Charles Tristan. “I have dethroned no one. I found the crown in the gutter. I picked it up and the people put it on my head.”

The fact of the matter is that AAP may be in danger of becoming the focus of the farmers’ ire.

It’s not clear whether anyone in the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Punjab or even in the Opposition Congress or Akali Dal or the BJP are conscious of the featherweight of history on their shoulders. And what they thought of Amarinder Singh letting the paddy grain filter through his fingers on Friday morning — as quintals of it lay in the open in Asia’s largest granary, in Khanna — surrounded by ageless farmers patiently waiting for their crop to be procured by the government.

The story of the unprocured paddy is at the heart of the political crisis in Punjab today. Because the state is dependent on its two-crop cycle and because the sowing, transplanting and threshing of the paddy crop has taken place in between the Lok Sabha polls in June, the Jalandhar West byelection in July, the panchayat polls earlier this October and four Assembly bypolls in the coming November, the politics of the state has been inexorably drawn in.

Moreover, the ruling AAP in Punjab is midway through its tenure. Some fatigue is naturally setting in. Rumours of large-scale corruption are rife. Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann has changed some of his innermost coterie, while advisers are being brought in to take charge of the government’s failing finances.

And then there’s the election in Delhi, slated for February 2025, expected to be a do-or-die battle between AAP and the BJP. It’s a no-brainer that Arvind Kejriwal & Co won’t let anything in Punjab come in the way of undermining the battle for Delhi.

That’s why the gathering farmer protests in Punjab are so important, even though several of them seem adept at cutting their nose to spite their face — or as the more evocative metaphor in Hindi, which invokes another body part, says, apne pair pe kulhaari maarna (hurting your own foot with the axe). In the last several days, farmers have taken over railway tracks, blocked roads and highways and are staging dharna in front of the houses of politicians.

Here's the irony, and here is why, midway through AAP’s tenure in Punjab, the story may once again be in danger of turning. While Punjab’s farmers may still be in no mood to forgive the BJP for the three farm laws it tried to impose upon them in 2020 — and have been punishing it by not even allowing BJP candidates to campaign in villages — the fact of the matter is that AAP may be in danger of becoming the focus of their ire.

The politics is both predictable and wearying. AAP is accusing the BJP-ruled Centre of refusing to move last year’s paddy out of Punjab, which is why the mandis are full and the grain is overflowing on the streets; it says the Centre had promised 17 trains daily to lift the current crop and that not enough are coming. The BJP has responded by accusing Mann of lying.

Worse, the AAP-BJP face-off over paddy procurement has come in the wake of several crises, some of them self-inflicted. Civic amenities in Punjab’s biggest cities are in a shambles — an ongoing The Tribune series on garbage dumps, encroachments, open sewer lines, the unhealthy state of hospitals and lack of schoolteachers in government schools is depressing. The crisis continues in agriculture, whether relating to the healthy determination of farmers to burn the stubble, despite penalties and red entries; free power is, meanwhile, burning a hole in the state’s pocket and deepening the water table. The exacerbating heroin addiction, colloquially known as ‘chitta’ or ‘white powder’, is made possible by a conniving network of Indian and Pakistani agents who fly in the drug via drones. The rising state deficit, with subsidies amounting to Rs 22,000 crore, is an open secret, as is a growing inability to pay it.

Two-and-a-half years ago, Mann dethroned the mighty Congress, didn’t allow the Akali Dal to regroup and prevented the BJP from gathering in. Punjab may not be willing to still vote in the BJP, but Punjab’s astute politicians are keenly aware that the BJP vote increases in every election. Meanwhile, the Sukhbir Badal-led Akali Dal either refuses or is simply unable to fill in the widening political vacuum.

The impression that “Punjab bahut saare nashey main dooba hua hai” (Punjab is sinking under the morass of several addictions), and that its leadership is finding it difficult to cope, is growing.

That’s why when the 82-year-old Amarinder Singh stirs the political pot, even if it’s in a granary in far-off Khanna, it still matters. He may never become the chief minister again. He didn’t campaign for his new party in the recent Lok Sabha polls. He is most likely guilty of several misdemeanours, including not living up to several of his own promises.

But even his worst detractors, both in his former party, the Congress, as well as in his current party, the BJP, will concede the man is still willing to call out a crisis that is fast assuming enormous political implications.

The question is, what is the AAP going to do about it?