Charanjit Singh Channi was a fortuitous find as an electoral asset in Punjab and helps the Congress signal its intention of empowering marginalised communities beyond the northern state. To resurrect its fortunes in a country where its traditional base of poor and weaker groups has eroded, however, the party will need a lot more than a face.
Call it the politics of caste or class. In anointing Charanjit Singh Channi as its chief ministerial candidate in poll-bound Punjab, the Congress
Charanjit Singh Channi was a fortuitous find as an electoral asset in Punjab and helps the Congress signal its intention of empowering marginalised communities beyond the northern state. To resurrect its fortunes in a country where its traditional base of poor and weaker groups has eroded, however, the party will need a lot more than a face.
Call it the politics of caste or class. In anointing Charanjit Singh Channi as its chief ministerial candidate in poll-bound Punjab, the Congress attempted to strike a balance between the two paradigms of identity politics in keeping with its electoral calculations in the border state, and beyond.
Left to itself, the Congress high command would have stuck to its original script to fight the Punjab elections under a collective leadership. But, an intense tussle between Channi and state Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu over chief ministerial sweepstakes, coupled with the Aam Aadmi Party naming its sole Lok Sabha MP from the state, Bhagwant Mann, for the top job, forced the party to change tack barely two weeks before the February 20 contest.
Even before Rahul Gandhi’s formal announcement at the Ludhiana rally this past Sunday, incumbent Channi’s naming was a foregone conclusion, unlike his unexpected elevation in September last when he replaced Captain Amarinder Singh as the first Dalit chief minister in Punjab’s political history. That was a coming of age moment for Channi as well as Punjab’s 32% Scheduled Caste population. Since then, Channi, a Sikh face from the Ramdasia sub-caste, has quickly come into his own, assiduously playing on his humble origins and grassroots politics to shore up his image as an ‘aam aadmi’ (common man).
That has helped him strike a wider cord beyond the caste identity while consolidating his sway in the fragmented Dalit communities, a crucial swing vote in the Punjab poll matrix. Channi was a fortuitous find as an electoral asset in Punjab and helps the Congress signal its intention of empowering marginalised communities beyond the northern state. To resurrect its fortunes in a country where its traditional base of poor and weaker groups has eroded, however, the party will need a lot more than a face.
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