Punjabi Rap

THESE ARE DAYS OF brinkmanship in Punjab. Less than a month after Parliament passed three farm reform laws, the Punjab Legislative Assembly on October 20th passed three bills designed to nullify the Central Acts. While the fate of the bills passed in Punjab remains uncertain—they are yet to acquire the governor’s assent—their passage represents a spiral of dangerous politics from which the state may find it hard to extricate itself.

“We have made the law, we have to face it. Whether the governor will give the permission or not is not known. Then it will go to the President. It is not known whether he will give his assent. But we will fight this,” Chief Minister Amarinder Singh said in a speech in the state Assembly that was high on rhetoric even as it displayed flashes of realism about the economic damage inflicted on Punjab due to the ongoing agitation by farmers there. By Singh’s estimation, the hit suffered by the state amounts to Rs 40,000 crore.

In his speech, Singh pleaded with the farmers to back away from the path of agitation as he cited the Rs 40,000 crore figure. “We have stood with you [farmers]; now you should stand with us [government],” he said even as he promised that his government would get the farmers what is due to them.

Placating the farmers is one spin that can be given to legislative action. But there is a far more visible story unfolding in the state: the fight for primacy between the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and the Congress. With the entry of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) into the fray, it was nearly impossible for Singh’s government to resist the pressure to take a firm stand against the Central laws.

Chief Minister Amarinder Singh’s speech in the state assembly was high on rhetoric even as it displayed flashes of realism about the economic damage inflicted on Punjab due to the ongoing agitation by farmers there. By Singh’s estimation, the hit suffered by the state amounts to Rs 40,000 crore

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What is being witnessed in Punjab is a spiral of high-pitched rhetoric and escalatory political steps that force the main political parties—the SAD and the Congress—to remain one step ahead of each other. The trouble is that there are only those many twists in that spiral before Punjab gets into a zone of politics that is dangerous and can spin out of control.

On September 17th, Lok Sabha passed two farm reform Bills. On the same day, Singh asked, “Why has Harsimrat not quit the Modi Cabinet? Why has Sukhbir Singh Badal not pulled the SAD out of the NDA even after the Narendra Modi Government failed to address their purported concerns on the farm bills?” By the end of the day, Bathinda MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal had quit the Union Cabinet. That evening, she tweeted: ‘I have resigned from the Union Cabinet in protest against anti-farmer ordinances and legislation. Proud to stand with farmers as their daughter & sister.’ Nine days later, the Akalis quit the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Now it was their turn to ratchet up pressure on Amarinder Singh and the Congress.

Even before the SAD had left the NDA, Sukhbir Singh Badal had trained his guns on the Punjab government. On September 24th, he said, “This is the best, the quickest and the most effective way for Punjab to pre-empt the application of the Centre’s latest anti-farmer Act in the state because the Centre’s Acts do not and will not apply to principal market yards declared by any state government. Therefore, the Punjab government must act without delay.”

The action of October 20th in the state Assembly was a direct fallout of this political pressure.

There is more at stake than merely protecting farmers’ interests. The one demand that is strangely out of place is that Minimum Support Prices (MSP) for wheat and rice be declared a statutory right. This was suggested by the Chief Minister on the floor of the Assembly on October 20th and reiterated by the Assembly in the unanimous resolution.

The Food Corporation of India (FCI) has purchased wheat and rice from Punjab and Haryana for decades without any law prescribing MSP for its operations in these two states. When the three reform Acts were passed, no less than Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised that MSP would continue. This promise was reiterated by other ministers, including Rajnath Singh and Dharmendra Pradhan. But these promises cut no ice, suggesting that something else is at work behind this demand. This is not hard to fathom.

The SAD is seeking to claw back the space it lost in the 2017 assembly elections to the AAP and the Congress. Since then, the party has been trying to find some emotive issue that could galvanise its supporters or, more accurately, enable it to win them back

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Punjab’s political problem is not the Amarinder Singh-led Congress but the discredited SAD seeking to claw back the space it lost in the 2017 Assembly elections to the AAP and the Congress. This was the first time that Punjab witnessed a three-cornered contest where each contestant had his/her own strengths. In the Malwa region of Punjab, the contest was bitter as this is a stronghold of the SAD. The result led to a drubbing for the SAD and one of its worst electoral performances since the state was formed. To rub salt into its wounds, the Akalis did particularly poorly in Malwa. The AAP and the SAD ended up fighting for the same set of votes. There is no way back to power for the SAD except by regaining what it has lost in this part of Punjab that accounts for 69 of 117 seats in the Assembly. Since then, the SAD has been trying to find some emotive issue that could galvanise its supporters, or more accurately, enable it to win them back.

Under Amarinder Singh, an experienced politician, the Akalis did not get any such opportunity. The two issues that can ignite politics in Punjab are farmers’ livelihood and religion. Singh said that openly in the Assembly on October 20th. The Akalis, through their incremental turning of political screws in Punjab, would like to combine religion and farmers’ issues, making it a deadly cocktail that can potentially sideline the AAP and prove to be a headache for the Congress. In the days after the SAD walked out of the NDA, Sukhbir Singh Badal did make noises about “Sikh issues” and “federalism”. These are echoes from the party’s past when Punjab was a turbulent province.

In trying to dissuade farmers from the path of agitation, Amarinder Singh has clearly demonstrated his understanding of the dangerous possibilities inherent in such gatherings. Can anyone rule out that a ‘farmers’ issue’ will not metamorphose into a ‘Sikh issue’?

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Punjab has a history of such political fights getting out of hand and engulfing the entire state in a zone of violence. Events that led to the lost decade of the 1980s began on a note not very different from what is being heard in Punjab now. Back in 1973, the Congress led by Chief Minister Giani Zail Singh was on a strong wicket. A year earlier, the Akalis had been beaten decisively in the Assembly elections. Zail Singh had marshalled religious sentiment to political ends with unmatched efficiency. The Guru Gobind Singh Marg—the highway that links shrines associated with the tenth Sikh Guru—had been inaugurated by him and he was reaping the symbolic and political benefits associated with the move. It was a bad time for the Akali Dal—as the SAD was then known—and the party was desperately in search of a theme that would allow them to get back into the reckoning.

It was at this point that the Anandpur Sahib Resolution was crafted and launched. The uses of this document—which were to prove ruinous—have an interesting story. There was relative quiet in the months, and even years, after its release in October 1973. This was largely a function of Akali efforts to woo the Janata Party at the national level, and this required tactful handling. That paid off. By 1977, the Akalis were back in the saddle as the ruling party of Punjab. The trouble began in the early 1980s when the Congress was back in power. That was when the Anandpur Sahib Resolution took on a very different meaning and demands for ‘federalism’ and ‘autonomy’ surfaced with a vengeance.

In those years, especially after 1983, the ruinous effects of political competition based on religion became obvious. While the two parties were busy hurling abuses at each other, an unknown Sikh preacher gained political traction to the point that both parties became irrelevant in Punjab’s politics for a decade. The preacher—Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale—was killed in 1984 in the course of military action in Amritsar. But his poisonous legacy consumed Punjab. The real culprits turned out to be the two main parties in the state, the Akali Dal and the Congress.

IT IS ERRONEOUS to say that the past repeats itself with regularity as no two human situations are exact. But what is happening in Punjab now has alarming similarities with its past. Now that Amarinder Singh has done what was necessary for keeping his party solvent in state politics, the danger is that the SAD and even the AAP may try to go one step further to get political advantage.

To his credit, the Chief Minister realises the danger. In trying to dissuade farmers from the path of agitation, he has demonstrated his understanding of the dangerous possibilities inherent in such gatherings. Can anyone rule out that a ‘farmers’ issue’ will not metamorphose into a ‘Sikh issue’? The problem is that his political rivals, especially the Akalis and the AAP, may not understand that.

The issue in Punjab is one thing, but the problem for the Union Government is of a very different magnitude. It needs to handle Punjab with tact. It has started well by ensuring that rice procurement continues without a hitch, a very powerful signal to farmers who can comprehend these matters that the Centre won’t leave them in the lurch. What the BJP needs to be careful about is its former partner, the SAD. The moment Punjab politics seems to take a wrong turn, the Centre needs to step in.

There is more at stake than merely protecting farmers’ interests. The one demand that is strangely out of place is that Minimum Support Prices (MSP) for wheat and rice be declared a statutory right. The Food Corporation of India has purchased wheat and rice from Punjab and Haryana for decades without any law prescribing MSP for its operations in these two states

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There is a bigger problem at hand. Unless it takes some tough steps, the three farm reform Acts will become irrelevant. If it agrees to the resolution passed by Punjab and gives a statutory backing to MSP, this will lead to virtually all states with surplus output demanding the same treatment. That can only lead to unimaginable and unbearable financial pressure on the Centre. Also, unless the bills passed by Punjab are not vetoed, or kept in cold storage at the governor or the President’s level, Congress-ruled states will pass similar laws to neutralise the Central legislation purely on political grounds. (In its 2019 Lok Sabha election manifesto, the Congress had promised far more ambitious farm reforms.)

The other, politically and economically more demanding option for the Centre, is to let these Bills pass. In that case, once Punjab is notified as a single market, the FCI can progressively reduce its wheat and rice purchases from Punjab and begin developing foodgrain markets in other states. This will not have any detrimental effect on food security in India as Madhya Pradesh and Telangana have enough surpluses in wheat and rice, respectively, to handle requirements under the National Food Security Act. But this will be a risky gambit: while it can serve as a warning to other states that might want to ‘do a Punjab,’ it may end up creating a major law and order problem in Punjab with the potential of even reviving separatism. What the Centre cannot ignore is the challenge thrown down by Punjab.

About The Author

Siddharth Singh

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