Distantly Close | AAP’s USP in Punjab’s crisis reminiscent of the dark 80s
The electorate is in search of a party that can “slay the demons” — Punjab's massive drug cartel — who’ve poisoned an entire generation. AAP's clean slate in the state is an advantage
The socio-economic crisis confronting Punjab is no less grave than what it had suffered in the tumultuous eighties when educated, unemployed youth got drawn to separatism. Except among elements on the fringe, the Khalistan word is now a rarity in common parlance. In what’s a throwback to yore, the intertwined problems of joblessness, worsening agrarian crisis, inflation and dipping family incomes have fathered another unsettling spectre: The rampant spread and use of drugs across cities and the hinterland.
The promises the political class made to check the drug cartels over the years, be it the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) or the Congress, have proved hollow for lack of political resolve or administrative resoluteness. (File Photo)
The “Udta Punjab” moniker a Bollywood film bequeathed is a misnomer that taunts. For the state’s rural economy isn’t on a high, it’s lying flat on the ground, requiring emergency rescue to stand up and start walking.
In the deeply dark eighties, the youth who weren’t earning hands had dropped out of joint rural households to get invested in the gun-culture spawned by separatism. A telling testimony it was to the State’s failure to gainfully engage the upcoming generation. The substitute now for easy money, or call it employment if you like, is the unchecked trade of what’s locally referred to as chitta — a synthetic drug derived from heroin and other psychotropic substances.
Much of the drug supply is from across the border; received by smugglers and delivered to couriers/intermediaries who use retailers young and old as peddlers with clientele across urban centres and villages. The going rate for chitta is over ₹1,500 per gram, the street prices shooting up when police crackdowns cause a supply-side crunch. The smuggler-supplier chain has deep social media penetration, the district-level investigators complicit or hamstrung by lack of matching software and surveillance technology, not to mention the drug-chain’s links with local politicians and their henchmen. The involvement of Pakistan in the nefarious game is worrisome and an extension, in fact, of the export of terror whose early roots were in the K-slogan it backed and encouraged as part of a proxy war in Punjab and Kashmir.
Broken poll-time promises
The promises the political class made to check the drug cartels over the years, be it the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) or the Congress, have proved hollow for lack of political resolve or administrative resoluteness. Quick-fire bails coupled with low conviction rates (for sale and possession of small quantities of drugs) are a result of infirmities in the law, the prosecution and the judicial process. Short imprisonments are a small price the drug traders are willing to pay for big profits.
Punjab historically has relied for jobs on the primary agriculture sector for want of strong manufacturing and service sectors. The latter developed well in recent years, but was hit hard by the pandemic, as in the rest of the country.
Against this backdrop, the electorate is voluble about and in search of a party that can “slay the demons” who’ve poisoned an entire generation across Punjab’s three regions. Majha and Doab are in as much pain but the worst affected is Malwa that elects maximum legislators (69), holding a monopoly, therefore, on making chief ministers. In recent decades, the CMs with homes in Malwa were five-time lucky PS Badal (SAD), two-time winner Captain Amarinder Singh and Ms Rajinder Kaur Bhattal (Congress).
AAP’s clean slate is a USP
Even the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) that’s showcasing itself as the harbinger of change, made an imprint in Malwa in 2017, pushing the SAD to the third spot to become the principal Opposition. Not surprising then, the AAP’s promise, enhanced by its CM-face, Bhagwant Mann resonates stronger with families who’ve lost lives and livelihoods to joblessness and the attendant drug scourge. Countless youth who’re skilled or educated have migrated to promised lands abroad for jobs that aren’t locally available.
At an eatery in Hari-ke-Pattan on the Majha-Malwa border, a clutch of farmers and tractor-mechanics sang in unison: “Hawa jhadoo wale di, marji upar wale di (Wave’s for jhadoo (AAP’s symbol), rest is God’s will.” Having tried others, they seemed to wager on Mann, MP from Malwa’s Sangrur, as the one who’d be serious about fighting the drug-spread: “He’d respond better, having first-hand knowledge of the havoc chitta has caused to poor families and farmers.”
It wasn’t that they weren’t sparing a thought for Charanjit Singh Channi’s Dalit candidature. “Vote will be cast in his name but anger against his party’s sitting legislators is a drag,” said Sukhdev Singh, his friend Jaswant nodding in approval. As they spoke, Sunil Mahajan butted in to concede: “I’m for the Congress but the public this time is with jadhoo…”
The message in the air was no different at Faridkot, some 70-km from Harike, where two of the three sitting legislators are from Kejriwal’s party. An inspector at a police check-post there agreed to talk on the assurance of not being named. His analysis: the contest in Malwa was 60:40 in the AAP’s favour. But the farmers’ Sanyukta Sangarsh Morcha could cut in its support base, helping the Congress in certain constituencies. The AAP’s liberalised liquor policy in Delhi and Mann’s (since abandoned) dipsomania is its rival's counter to its assurance to fight drugs. It cuts ice but only with a few, the consumption of liquor being a popular habit that is seen as a lesser addiction in the State.
“People want change. They think AAP can rid the region of drugs. Smack is more easily available in villages than sugar and flour,” the officer said. “Scores of boys peddle chitta in villages. They aren’t caught as nobody wants to stand witness against their pind de munde (village boys).”
BJP’s Dera card
The SAD is listed lower in sweepstakes despite the high esteem in which the elder Badal’s held in the region as a former CM and MLA from Lambi in Muktsar. But a Faridkot-based journalist, Balwinder Hali felt the outcome in Malwa could be impacted eventually by the voting pattern of the Dera Sachcha Sauda followers who can tilt scales in over 40 Malwa seats.
The Dera’s first choice is likely to be the BJP — whose leadership helped its incarcerated headman, Baba Ram Rahim come out on a furlough. If speculation about a post-poll SAD-BJP tie-up is true, their second choice could be the Akali Dal. The damage in that situation will be to the vote base of AAP and the Congress, possibly altering pre-poll calculations.
HT’s veteran political editor, Vinod Sharma, brings together his four-decade long experience of closely tracking Indian politics, his intimate knowledge of the actors who dominate the political theatre, and his keen eye which can juxtapose the past and the present in his weekly column, Distantly Close
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