Punjab poll script misses the plot

Punjab Assembly polls could perhaps be one election where the suspense was maintained throughout, there was high pitched campaign and honours equally divided with no clear cut winners emerging as campaigning came to an end on Saturday evening.

Now when the time has come for the voters to make their choice, it would be between the agenda of development set by the ruling Akali Dal-BJP combine, the promises of Congress and the offer of a “fresh breeze” by the Sanjha Morcha.

With opinion polls largely divided, half of them favouring SAD-BJP combine and the other half favouring Congress, voters would not even be swayed by going for the party that is winning the polls. Clearly, there is no wave for and against any party. While there are numerous takers for SAD-BJP’s development agenda, there are equal numbers of those who think that the promises of Congress hold greater promise.

I have been talking to reporters on the ground, people living in different areas of the state, experts, bureaucrats, field surveyors – some belonging to political parties and some from other organisations, political leaders and workers of all hues in the last fortnight.

At the micro level several factors have come into pay which is rather neglected when we see a macro picture of the state with issues differing from one region to the other and from one constituency to the other.

What is clear is that SAD-BJP has largely bucked anti-incumbency. People don’t change governments as a matter of routine every five years. That myth has been broken in the elections which took place in this century in several parts of the country – Bihar, Delhi, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhatisgarh, Orissa, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh are testimony to this fact. People want stability, they want development and do not want uncertainties in government policy. Punjab is no exception. In that sense, people of Punjab are not visibly angry with the current government and are not desperate to throw it out.

Then, at the micro level, there are the rebels. Both the parties are affected by it. Congress, is bearing the brunt of rebellion so much so that in some places the rebels are in actual fight while the official party candidate is trailing. How much votes the rebels manage and how much damage can they cause to the official party nominees is a matter of conjecture and would be known only after the detailed results. But you ask the candidates facing the rebels and they would say that it indeed is indeed a big factor for them and would make the difference between a victory and a defeat.

In the Doaba region where the dalit population is as high as 37 per cent, it is the BSP factor which is worrying the Congress. After the assassination of Swami Ramanand of Dera Sachkhand Ballan in Vienna in May 2009 violence erupted in Punjab. The dera followers, mainly Doaba dalits, believe that the Akali Dal did not do anything against the perpetrators in Punjab and the central government led by Congerss did not act diplomatically to nab the culprits. So, some of them are veering towards the BSP rather than the two parties which they have been hitherto supporting. Apart from this, in the Malwa region, the Dera Sacha Sauda factor looms large which has the potential to tilt the balance in several segments.

Let is now take the supporters of the Left parties. Punjab was a bastion of the Left not long time back and Congress was its ally till the 2002 polls. For the first time in recent years, they are in a position to get 2000-3000 votes every constituency, if not more, as alliance partner of PPP in Sanjha Morcha. Obviously, this will be from the Congress quota as the Left supporters never voted for the panthic agenda of the Akali Dal nor for its ally BJP.

PPP is also an untested phenomenon as for the first time in over two decades, a third front has emerged which is contesting all the seats. While PPP is hitting the Akalis, it is also affecting the Congress in urban areas. So the PPP votes are coming from the quota of both the parties.

What has worked for the Congress is the pathetic condition of some of the cities. Urban rejuvenation merely remained a talking point and not something to be implemented on the ground. Congress has recovered in cities like Amritsar and Ludhiana amongst others and it would be the BJP which is finding it tough to retain even a dozen seats from a high of 19 it got last time.

Then it is the pathetic condition of schools and lack of focus on government education. It is a pan-Punjab issue which Congress is trying to cash in and has been rather successful.

But again, Congress frittered away the natural anti-incumbency advantage it had. First, there was inordinate delay in announcement of party tickets and leaders and ticket seekers were camping in Delhi when the Akalis were campaigning throughout. Congress wasted at least 10 days in the process and let the entire world know that even for deciding routine matters, the party has to be dependent on New Delhi.

Congress also failed to use Manmohan Singh properly in the campaign and despite having a Prime Minister from Punjab, they never portrayed him in the elections nor did they try to have more meetings to project him as an icon of the state, who has made it big, nationally and internationally. He addressed one single meeting in Amritsar and even there, the party had to use the services of a Gurdas Mann to keep the small crowd interested. This was one state where the Prime Minister could have been used electorally but it didn’t happen. Instead, the party brought in people like Rajesh Khanna and Nagma, long forgotten.

There could be a certain amount of anti-incumbency against the SAD-BJP combine but it adopted a clever ploy during the polls and targeted the central government’s policy on farmers like low MSP on crops, faulty fertiliser policy, etc to point that UPA has been in power for almost 8 years now and the hardships which the farmers are facing was largely due to that factor.

There have been several grey areas in the run-up to the voting day, clearly indicating that only the money bags can win elections. The unaccounted cash recovered so far has been to the tune of almost Rs 35 crore in the state. A senior police official told me that this was only the tip of the iceberg and only a fraction, say 1-2 per cent of the money which was floating in the state before elections. So imagine the amount of black money in the state and how it is used to influence voters. The figures would definitely give fresh arsenal to Baba Ramdev who wants to bring black money stashed abroad and Anna Hazare who wants to end corruption.

Then, there have been huge seizures of every variety of narcotics, not only when the model code of conduct came into force but even before the elections. Narcotics were being stored in bulk for use during elections and so was liquor.

After a grueling campaign, what comes as a dampener is the fact that results would be known only on March 6. It is like an anti climax, something which could clearly have been avoided. (29.1.2012)

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