With a Khalistan supporter winning bypoll, is AAP’s Punjab headed towards vanishing point?

George Herbert Bush won his single-term presidency after stints as chief spook at the CIA and vice president. His team coined the slogan ‘It’s the economy stupid’.

If only the rulers of the state of Punjab woke up to fixing the economy, things would not be at this pass. The completion of the AAP’s term in office might be in some doubt already. And even more importantly, Punjab is on the verge of bankruptcy that will parallel that of Sri Lanka.

Wildly rich but tax free, gun-toting, politically entitled, connected, Mercedes-driving Arhtiyas, rule the rural roost. Former Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh was careful to be in harmony with this powerful group.

They showed their might, even though just in their hundreds, during the unjustified farmer agitation that forced the Central government to repeal the three farm laws.

There is massive unemployment, and few avenues open to the youth. Punjabis have long reacted by emigrating to the West and this has not stopped, even 75 years after independence.

The government of Punjab is notorious for not paying its bills to contractors, and soon it may be unable to pay salaries to government employees as well. In fact, the previous government was not able to pay the arrears in revised pay structures from 2016 to date.

State Finance Minister Harpal Singh Cheema said that the debt of the state stood at Rs 2.63 lakh crore or 45.88 percent of the state gross domestic product (SGDP), in a recent White Paper. He called it an ‘economic morass and a debt trap’. The 2022 Punjab budget that was presented soon after the White Paper therefore could do no more than tinker with Punjab’s problems.

The state is nevertheless bristly about Central intervention with strings attached, under the Modi administration. Only an unconditional bail-out will do for the AAP, blaming all woes on past governments, and Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann has been to Delhi demanding vast sums already.

But without reform, it would be just paying out good money after bad, and the Union Finance Ministry is not interested. Neither are global lending agencies such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Both like India because it pays its debts on time, but individual states, not guaranteed by the Centre are another matter.

Punjab does nothing to help itself, and the essentially populist AAP government will not bite the bullet. It is easier to blame the Centre like West Bengal, its chief minister much admired by Kejriwal, does.

So the AAP ignores the dire numbers on its balance sheet, the debt trap the state has entered long ago. The call that needs to go out is for deep and painful structural change, but no government of Punjab, including this one, has the political stomach to make such changes. For the AAP, with both states it has under its belt not exactly flush, the situation is an existential dilemma. It is therefore very vulnerable to inimical slush funds coming into the state from abroad. Funds with nefarious intent but which allow for a degree of leakage.

Meanwhile, Punjab just ploughs on, even as it grows unsustainable paddy in a water deficit state, a legacy of the Green Revolution under prime minister Indira Gandhi, when India was not able to feed itself, and Punjabis were considered to be the best farmers around. It also grows large quantities of wheat. Both continue to be grown today even when better quality crop comes from other states, and India is food surplus. This, just to get its hands on the minimum support prices (MSP) and compulsory government buying of its output.

There is widespread sarkari corruption, entrenched law and order issues, drug and gun-running, nascent terrorism, a builder mafia, hyper religiosity akin to Islamic extremism by groups such as the Nihangs.

The Khalistani sympathisers, in an echo of the 1980s movement, like cosying up still to an uncomfortably broke Pakistan. A Pakistan that persecutes its Sikhs and vandalises its gurdwaras. Nobody seems to revise strategy in Punjab.

It appears, despite its brave, derring-do, and talented people, of whom many are in the armed forces, that Punjab is headed towards a real, as opposed to a seeming, vanishing point. The definition of vanishing point is that place at which receding parallel lines seem to meet when represented in linear perspective.

Desperate to avoid approaching doom, the voting public imported the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), with a supremo from Haryana, to rule over an insistently Sikh Punjab. Kejriwal is an IIT graduate and a Magsaysay winner, besides having been an Indian Revenue Service (IRS) bureaucrat, but today he is amongst the wilier of our Opposition politicians, with his eye on the main chance.

The success of the AAP in Punjab is a paradox and defies logic at one level, because no non-Sikh government has ever been elected in Punjab. Bhagwant Mann, a trim bearded ‘cut surd’ with an alcohol problem is seen as little more than a puppet chief minister. He is a stand-in and proxy for Kejriwal, who rules day-to-day by remote control from wherever he is.

The AAP stamp is clearly visible, with Delhi-based Hindu handlers such as Raghav Chadha, massive print and TV advertisements, replete with clean governance gimmicks, as employed in Delhi. There is an attempt at taking credit for all manner of things, done or not done, granted or rolled back, AAP style.

This win and presence is sought to be used to expand into other states such as Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat, particularly as a weak Congress continues to fade electorally. But how long will the people of Punjab, other Sikhs, even away and apart from the Khalistani sympathiser, put up with an AAP ineptitude?

Only three months ago, the AAP, accused of having been backed by Khalistani money, won a clear-cut mandate, up from 28 seats five years ago. But like John Kennedy, America’s first Catholic president, just as Joe Biden is only the second, Kejriwal may have made a big mistake. Kennedy persecuted the largely Catholic Italian mafia, after narrowly winning the presidency using their support and money.

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Kejriwal is seen to have turned his back on the Khalistanis immediately after winning, allegedly using their money. The AAP is now looking at a broader national footprint and being Khalistan supporters won’t do for that. Former AAP leader Kumar Viswas pointed out the Khalistan connection and Kejriwal immediately sent the Punjab Police after him. He did likewise for criticism emanating from BJP’s Tajinder Pal Bagga and Naveen Kumar Jindal.

However, subduing brewing public discontent, or indeed amongst the AAP’s own MLAs, may not be so easy. He should perhaps ask Uddhav Thackeray about this.

The Khalistanis have reared their separatist heads once again, rap artists and Canadian sponsorship included, albeit tentatively.

The newest manifestation is the AAP loss in a by-election to Shiromani Akali Dal (Amristsar) leader Simranjit Singh Mann in Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann’s ‘stronghold’ Sangrur.

This Mann, who won by 5,822 votes, defeating the AAP candidate, as well as the Congress and BJP candidates, took away the only Lok Sabha seat the AAP had. Simranjit Singh Mann is an avowed Khalistani supporter and Bhindranwale fan. In fact, he promptly dedicated his win to being inspired by Bhindranwale’s teachings.

Not long ago, alleged Khalistanis attacked a Kali Mandir in Punjab too. Punjabi Hindus, let alone settlers from elsewhere, have been steadily relegated to second-class status, or driven out of the state by the Sikhs. Hindus can’t win elections in Punjab anymore. If they use proxy Sikhs, as AAP did, it is possible, but will even this stick for any length of time?

While the Khalistan sympathiser is turning to separatism probably frustrated by the bankrupt economy, many are also converting to Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant versions. Priests at the Akal Takht have recently voiced concern but there are already 1,000 churches in Punjab. Does this make it easier to migrate to Canada, if you become an oxymoronic Sikh-Christian? Otherwise, why is it happening at all?

The 1971 cult classic Vanishing Point is a Hollywood movie about a high-speed car chase across America, that eventually ends by wilfully crashing into an impromptu roadblock using two bulldozers at a small town in California. Here, there is a nihilistic end to the story that India cannot afford to contemplate with this border state.

At the moment, it is not clear if the AAP has bitten off more than it can chew in Punjab. If it cannot make a success of running it in its parlous state, it will put a big brake on its further ambitions. From the outset it looks like the AAP government is up against multiple entrenched lobbies such as the drug mafia, the free electricity and water culture, subsidies, the smarting political parties it beat in a landslide, and its adversarial relationship with the BJP both in the state and at the Centre. It also lucked out because of the deep-seated problems of the state, and no relief from either the Akalis or the Congress.

But, as the man said, it’s the economy stupid, and nothing less will do.

The writer is a Delhi-based political commentator. Views expressed are personal.

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