VIEWPOINT
AMITABH SHUKLA
One of the most enduring
mysteries of Indian politics in recent times would perhaps be the diminishing
clout of the Congress in Punjab at a time when it has a
Sikh Prime Minister.
In the last 10 years, ever since
Manmohan Singh became the Prime Minister in 2004, Congress has been on a losing
spree in the State and has virtually lost all the polls — be it of the
Assembly, by-elections, municipal polls, Panchayat polls, SGPC elections and
what not. The situation has come to such
a pass that Congress MLAs have been deserting their parties, contesting by-polls
and becoming MLAs of the SAD again. No one in politics would take such a risk
unless there is guarantee of winning.
Of course, in between the losses,
in 2009 Lok Sabha polls, Congress did reasonably well winning 8 of the 13 Lok
Sabha seats when Singh was projected as the prime ministerial candidate of the
party. In that election, I remember visiting several constituencies in Punjab
and finding much to my surprise that the pictures of Manmohan Singh were much
bigger than that of the Congress president in the publicity material of the
party. Clearly, it paid electoral dividends.
Apart from the 2009 polls,
Congress has nothing to show in the State — facing a crisis of sorts with
bickering leaders and dejected workers not knowing how to take the Akalis head
on. Perhaps it requires an intense political and sociological study to find out
why the base of Congress has been continuously slipping in the State despite
Manmohan Singh taking over in Delhi
whom many say is the tallest living Sikh personality.
Interestingly, all this has
unfolded in the last decade or so even when you do not hear a word against the
Prime Minister even by his political opponents in Punjab .
No one in Shiromani Akali Dal or Punjab unit of BJP
speaks anything against Singh even though they go all out in their attack on
Congress President Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi.
In fact, Akali Dal treats Singh
reverentially and even when you talk to the leaders in private, they have good
words for the Prime Minister. Clearly the party delineates Singh and Congress
and absolves him of all the follies of the party of which government he heads
in New Delhi . Due to the
appropriation of Singh by the Akali Dal, at the grass roots level, the Akali
Dal projects the Prime Minister as one of its own. No wonder, Chief Minister
Parkash Singh Badal rushes to meet the PM in Delhi
whenever the opportunity arises.
Even as the Akali Dal
appropriated Manmohan Singh as “one of its own”, Congress gradually started
disassociating from its own Prime Minister and now the party has practically
disowned him not only in Punjab but also elsewhere in
the country. Leave aside 2009, in
none of the polls thereafter Congress mentioned him in his home State nor did
the organisation ever refer to him as a towering leader from the State who made
it big nationally.
Even in the 2014 campaign, you
hear every issue under the sun — relevant or not — Operation Bluestar, Congress
Government’s role in storming the Golden Temple, 1984 anti-Sikh riots, the acts
of omission and commission of the Akalis, who did what and who stabbed whom in
the back etc. But strangely, Congress has so far desisted from using the name
of Manmohan Singh electorally. The party is yet to tell the electorate formally
that the first Sikh Prime Minister of the country was from the party and that
too for 10 years.
I still cannot comprehend why
Congress has completely detached itself with Manmohan Singh in Punjab
even though he has a groundswell of support as one Sikh who has made it big,
really big. If Congress disassociates with the legacy of Singh in the rest of
the country, and this is what the party under Rahul Gandhi is doing, it is
understandable. For a decade, he presided over an indecisive Government
incapable of taking an initiative, a regime of high ticket scams and leaves
nothing as a lasting legacy for the people of the country.
But still, if Singh contests from
one of the parliamentary seats in Punjab , I am sure he
would win hands down. The Akali Dal would have preferred not to put a candidate
and the cascading effect of Singh taking on the electoral battlefield would
have been felt not only in Punjab but other northern
States as well. When reluctant Congress leaders like Capt Amarinder Singh,
Ambika Soni, Partap Singh Bajwa and Sunil Jakhar could be asked to contest,
surely Singh could have volunteered to steer the boat when the sea is rough in
his own State. Though he has said he would not be the PM again, surely he could
have become a Lok Sabha MP and motivate the workers of the party by contesting
the last election of his life.
The economist Prime Minister
hardly campaigned for his party either in the 2007 Assembly polls or the 2012
polls. His party lost both. The PM does not interact with mediapersons but one
pertinent question would be why he has lost all interest in his home State and
what according to him would be one thing for which he should be remembered. I
am sure he would smile benignly at these questions and prefer not to answer
them.
But surely there are answers to
these questions. I think, Singh has become a prisoner of his own image, an
image which he cultivated assiduously over a quarter of a century and now
cannot get out of it. This was the image of an intellectual, an economist and a
bureaucrat who is into politics by accident and does not have high esteem about
his colleagues and fellow political travelers.
The image was also of an obedient
bureaucrat, the perennial “Yes Minister” who forgot that he himself was the
Minister as years of saying yes to political bosses was too ingrained in his psyche.
Perhaps he considered it below his stature to involve with regional politics of
Punjab and interact with Congress leaders of the State
as he thought that his image in Washington
and London would be blurred if he
got electorally involved.
As far as the lasting legacy of
the outgoing Prime Minister is concerned, perhaps he will count the Indo-US
nuclear deal, for which he staked his Government in UPA I. But did anyone hear
about the nuclear deal in the run-up to the campaign of 2014? The issue has
been forgotten simply because it is a non-issue and unlikely to fetch even 100
votes all over the country. Then there were the so-called “Rights”— to
Information, 100 days of employment, food etc. But remember, Rahul Gandhi and
the Congress under him has appropriated this and they do not give even an iota
of credit to Singh.
So what should the people
consider as the legacy of the Prime Minister? Should they consider it as a
wasted tenure of 10 years where things moved on their own pace and the
bureaucracy ran the country the way it felt? I suspect, there will be a strong
resonance with the belief that the institutional machinery ran the Government
for 10 years and Singh was a symbolic head, sitting at 7
Race Course Road , the official residence of the
Prime Minister of India. (March 31, 2014)
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