Punjab byelections a litmus test for Mann government

IN a never-ending ‘festival of democracy’, another round of elections has been announced, including the four byelections to the Punjab Vidhan Sabha. Clearly, much is at stake in these elections for the Bhagwant Mann government. An electoral reverse in the bypolls after its disappointing performance in Haryana could demoralise the ruling party’s cadres and raise doubts about its future.

The government’s immediate challenge, therefore, is to demonstrate its political dominance in the state by winning the byelections in a stiff challenge from the Congress and the BJP. Midway into its present tenure, its real test will be at the end of the government’s present term when its performance will be judged on the touchstone of whether its policies and performance have earned it the willing allegiance of the people.

For the present, the land of the Gurus and the five rivers, known as the granary of India and the sword arm of the nation, finds its people in distress. The hopelessness of the marginalised masses, crushed by penury and the resultant loss of dignity, rampant drug addiction, a crumbling public infrastructure and widening social divides heightened by unconscionable economic disparities, have scarred the soul of Punjab.

An understaffed constabulary tasked to address the stirrings of radicalism, political violence, gangsterism, a perpetual face-off between the government and the dominant farming community and the large-scale migration of unemployed youth to foreign lands in search of an elusive future, foretells the story of a state in decline. The continuing slide in several development indices presents a harsh but irrefutable reality.

A look at the Niti Aayog’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) rankings for Punjab for 2023-24 speaks for itself. For instance, on SDG-8 related to decent work and economic growth, Punjab, which was once among the nation’s top three states on most development parameters, is now ranked at number 18. On gender equality (SDG-5), it is ranked at number 19 and is at number eight for good health and wellbeing (SDG-3).

The state’s debt burden on account of the fiscal profligacy of successive governments is more than Rs 3.51 lakh crore, as of March 2024 (India Policy Forum, 2024, Economic Development of Punjab, India Prospects and Policies). According to the Niti Aayog’s Multidimensional Poverty Index for 2023, 4.75 per cent of Punjab’s population lives in abject poverty.

All political parties must share the responsibility for this situation. Self-serving certificates of progress and development by successive governments attest the hypocrisy of our politics. The renewal of the state demands a cooperative endeavour premised upon a broad democratic consensus on the way forward.

For this, a necessary first condition is the eschewing of politics of vendetta against political rivals. To rescue Punjab from the vicious cycle of economic stagnation and secure the state’s future, the incumbent government, with an unprecedented legislative majority, must own responsibility for sound policy decisions.

It could start with the fine-tuning of its agricultural policy, including crop diversification and rationalisation of water consumption given the precarious water situation in the state, both in terms of its quality and future availability.

A report by the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, released in October 2024, has drawn attention to the link between unsustainable subsidies and the imprudent water use for agriculture in India. The diminishing availability of potable water in several districts of Punjab and frightening forecasts in this regard present an existentialist crisis. The state’s education and health sectors need a transformational revisiting for reasons recorded in several official documents.

Also, it is time to acknowledge that no government can rest its claim to popular support solely on the basis of unsustainable freebies and state largesse, simply because no leader or political party can command an economic impossibility. The irrefutable logic of the law of diminishing returns compels a qualitative change in the practice of our politics. Political parties cannot remain captive to the pull of power regardless of the ends to which it is applied nor can competitive politics regress to a point where public discourse is constantly debased by reckless personal accusations without a meaningful conversation about our grave common challenges.

The Bhagwant Mann government has the time and opportunity still to deliver upon its promises and vindicate its much asserted claim of being a government with a difference. In its endeavours to pull the state out of the morass in which it finds itself, it is entitled to necessary support from the Central Government in a spirit of cooperative federalism.

But it is equally important that it trusts the electorate with the truth of the situation and engage constructively with the Opposition for the difficult but necessary steps to address the situation, notwithstanding ideological contestation and pursuit of political ambitions.

For its part, the electorate must insist on an enlightened political engagement in the ensuing elections and ensure that each election is a time for introspection and furtherance of progressive democratic politics centred around the fundamental questions that confront the state.

And, all parties, including the Congress, which is in a revanchist mode in the state, and a resurgent BJP, will do well to remember the unmistakable message of the elections in the neighbouring states that the collective wisdom of the people shaped by the memories of their lived experiences manifests itself eventually and owes no apology to the predictions of political pundits.

The ultimate test of elections in the deepening of democracy is whether they yield leaders and policies that command the peoples’ trust and give expression to the muffled sighs of the oppressed yearning for a life of dignity. The byelections in Punjab will test our ability to take electoral democracy beyond the momentary impulses and transient passions, towards the realisation of its higher purposes. Let us, therefore, bind our politics by the fetters of duty owed to the people.

Views are personal