MIND THE GAP: In this day and age of byte/bite-sized remarks flung across Facebook or Twitter masquerading as arguments, we continue to believe in the power of real journalism: brave, objective, intelligent, and marked by sobriety. With Kisan Morcha making a major intervention in Punjab’s political narrative, and the electoral arena exploding into a thousand headlines and debates, we intend to cast a serious, deep gaze into political forces, parties, personalities and agendas. It is with this intent that we launch our new series – Mind the Gap. We hark to the people of Punjab, those living in Punjab and all around the world, to ‘Mind the Gap’ because there’s an abyss between what Punjab needs and what its politics is providing. No cheap shots, no petty mongering. Just good journalism. The first in that series addresses the Shiromani Akali Dal, a party of history and a claimant to power. As you read, at all times, please “Mind the Gap.” Your feedback will be eagerly awaited. – Editor, WSN.

SEVERAL OF THEM WOULD HAVE PROTESTED if they could have found the right arguments -George Orwell described our politics in his 1945 allegory, Animal Farm.

Fashioning the right arguments is a serious job, and it needs time and attention – your time and your attention. Any situation presents itself through a Dickensian prism: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”Punjab stands on the horns of time today, a forked road that can lead to realising Begumpura, or failing the Gurus, the Sufis, the hardworking people.

History has placed the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) in a position where its role will be a defining element in whatever fate awaits Punjab. Does its contemporary leadership understand that onerous responsibility?

A 100-year-old party with a rich legacy, a chequered journey, an underwhelming contemporaneous role in politics, and its own future at the crossroads — If Punjab matters, then SAD needs to look within, and without, to see where it stands, and where it is headed.

During the last nearly five years, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) had one major objective: to become the Number 2 Object of Hate.

In the last Assembly election, it was relegated to the third position following its worst-ever electoral performance.

Then, it hit a jackpot.

Amarinder Singh ran the worst administration ever. Governing in absentia, the state reeled under a poor law and order situation, ineffectual civic services, amateurish political tactics, inefficacious grievance redressal, incompetent and inept fiscal handling, and a remiss or criminally incompetent policing.

And still, the Shiromani Akali Dal failed to swap places with Amarinder Singh’s government.

It continued to be the Number One Object of Hate, relegating the poorly run state government to the second position.

All this while, of all the politicians in Punjab, Sukhbir Singh Badal could legitimately claim credit for remaining on the ground and keeping his party machinery working more than anyone else in any party. 

But the party’s reputational aspect did not see any improvement. He was voluble, visible, fiery, and available, but still not acceptable.

Compelled by these circumstances, SAD did all the right things in the political textbook. 

It put forth suave faces before the media. A very soft-spoken and amiable person like Daljit Singh Cheema was made available to every journo for a quote on any issue. A Chandumajra could be asked to hold forth on any crisis. A Maheshinder Singh Grewal could take the hits on an Arnab Goswami show, and a Valtoha could always fill in slots on Punjabi news channels.

However, the government proved to be made up of a bunch of nincompoops who could not find an exit out of a restroom. No action was taken on the sacrilege cases, nothing in the fight against drugs, and no measures to help the state’s youth. Every promise Amarinder Singh had made turned out to be a hoax. And the fact that he had a ‘Gutka Sahib‘ in his hands when he made those promises from public platforms only made matters worse.

 Read also: The 92/117 verdict: Debating its implications for Punjab, Panth & Politics

And still, the Shiromani Akali Dal continued to top the hate charts based on negative public perception.

It ticked all the boxes in the playbook – Kept a confrontationist posture, harked back to its glorious history, donned a panthic avatar, observed SAD foundation day anniversaries on a magnificent scale, maintained its vice-like grip on the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), kept the cadre largely together, spoke about federalism time and again, quit its alliance with the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP), sacrificed a federal ministership, risked confrontation with the all-powerful Modi-Shah duo, and its leadership found far more time for politics than for hospitality and transportation businesses.

The Brahmpuras, the Dhindsas, and sundry others ditched the party when the going got tough, but the House of Badals stood firm, fighting the lonely battle of a perception onslaught. As we go online, the Amritsar oligarchs -the Brahmpuras are back leaving people confused about what ‘Taksali’ even means anymore.

Hardly anyone questions Sukhbir Singh Badal on the grounds of efficiency. He’s well-read, is sharp on the file, has done his learning in the government, has acquired hands-on experience, can deal with bureaucracy, is a go-getter, and can hold forth in a room full of business executives.

Congress’s Navjot Singh Sidhu is a hot potato for everyone, including his own party. He has done as much to decimate his own as his foes. The Charanjit Singh Channi administration finds him a liability, and he returns the Chief Minister the same favour. Both badmouth Amarinder Singh, the Badals and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). Meanwhile, both AAP and Arvind Kejriwal have failed to get their house in order and are searching for a suitable Jatt Sikh face. So far, Kejriwal, who does not look like a Jatt or a Sikh, is the face.

That’s where the Akali Dal continues to lose the plot. The fact that the Akali Dal has not undergone any churning or introspection even after the humiliating defeat of 2017. Any political party would at least enact a charade of introspection; the SAD did not. Sukhbir Singh Badal did not deem it necessary.

This would be considered the perfect recipe for catapulting Sukhbir Singh Badal to the top job in Punjab. Why, then, have things gone so awry that even the Satta bazaar is not betting big on the Akali Dal forming the next government?

The real reason is that SAD has never ever tried to unravel the reasons it bit the dust five years ago. Till date, SAD is misreading that verdict. Its post-poll analysis was bad, and it is sticking to that line. Even today, Sukhbir Singh Badal tells people not to repeat the ‘mistake’ that people made in 2017, and not to fall for the false promises made by his opponents, and to vote for their ‘own’ party this time.

That’s where the Akali Dal continues to miss the plot. It has not undergone any churning or introspection even after the humiliating defeat of 2017. Any political party would at least enact a charade of introspection; SAD has not. Sukhbir Singh Badal does not deem it necessary.

Clearly, he knows there’s no one in the party who can seriously question his leadership. The likes of Dhindsas squirmed, but too little. A decade of building superhighways, airports, malls, air-conditioned bus stands, launching shagun schemes, budhapa pensions, doling out free bicycles and setting up sewa kenders has not yielded the intended benefits. Badal Sr. stopped holding sangat darshans, and no one challenged his son to a leadership duel.

This is how the party now works: The old system of a core committee, a working committee, a political affairs committee or whatever else committee expressing full faith in the high command, continues. Third rung minions do not have the gumption to question why The Leader is selected and not elected. Being seen with The Leader on a stage is peddled as their achievement.

This is how the party works now:

The old system of a core committee, a working committee, a political affairs committee, or whatever else committee that expresses full faith in the high command, continues. Third rung minions do not have the gumption to question why The Leader has been selected and not elected. Being seen with The Leader onstage is peddled as an achievement. For such a photo-op, the minions obediently gather around The Leader. The Leader utters some inanity about an upcoming force like AAP. The minions waiting at the gates repeat the inanity. All across Punjab, there is no SAD: it is just The Leader who remains plastered on innumerable hoardings. 

All across Punjab, there is no SAD: it is just The Leader who remains plastered on innumerable hoardings.

When it was time to be the Opposition party, The Leader decided to declare that, in fact, he was the ruling party. He actually kept up the boast that DCs and SSPs would still take his phone calls. The minions were awestruck by the omnipotence of their leader. People saw a pattern between The Leader’s boasts and the friendly royal ruler’s sham reactions. 

The minions were now even more convinced that The Leader was omnipotent. 

Such minions have no ambition to matter in the larger scheme of things. They merely want to be able to pretend that they matter in the larger scheme of things. They are frequently reminded of their utter dependence for security and survival on The Leader. “Call me if anyone torments you,” The Leader tells them. The minions are convinced even more.

The Leader had perfected this game during his years in power. He would pass the crumbs around, very carefully, making the minions first fight for it, and then be grateful when they got a morsel. For how else would the morsel have looked big if the minions were not made to fight for it? And The Leader knows how to keep such fights going. Holding back the morsels is one way. Letting know that more morsels are on the way is another. 

The Leader had perfected this game during his years in power. He would pass the crumbs around, very carefully, making the minions first fight for it, and then be grateful when they got a morsel. For how else would the morsel have looked big if the minions were not made to fight for it? And The Leader knows how to keep such fights going. Holding back the morsels is one way. Letting know that more morsels are on the way is another. 

 Read also: Understanding 92/117 & Decoding Badlaav - Kisan Andolan, Depoliticised Politics & a Punjab in search of an Inquilab

These days, he is on a whirlwind electioneering trip. In every constituency, he is telling people he will make the local minion a little replica of himself.

Minion ‘A’ becomes a halqa-incharge. Minion ‘B’ is promised he will be made one if Minion ‘A’ fails. Minion ‘C’ hopes both pull each other down. All minions are also selected by The Leader. Lesser minions insert advertisements and put up flex hoardings to proclaim their direct link with Minion ‘A’ or Minion ‘B’.  

The Leader, meanwhile, has many favours to bestow. Such as choosing to have a cup of tea with wannabe Minion C. This is projected by the house-trained media as a major political move. Dropping in on a marriage ceremony to bless the newlyweds is considered a hallmark of the humility of The Leader.  

The minions then try to emulate The Leader. Everyone has decoded the signal. Follow The Leader, follow The Leader’s actions, follow his pretences, too. Follow his shams, his theatre, his Punch and Judy act through the maze of politics.

The Leader, meanwhile, practices the art of survival. He is hailed for being a survivor. But no one mentions that the survival is because of his immense capacity to shun principles.

There was a time The Leader dubbed the SAD-BJP political alliance a ‘fraternal alliance’. From the 1980s card, ‘the Azad Hasti of the Sikhs’, to ‘higher MSP for crops’, ‘international airports’, ‘thermal plants’, ‘power agreements’ and ‘beadbis‘, The Leader plays all the cards in the deck. He keeps some more in his back pocket. ‘River waters’, ‘Chandigarh’, ‘Punjabi-speaking areas’, ‘attack on SGPC’, ‘zulm on his minions’. 

When the ‘party of history’ came to power, it dumped the history, forgot the legacy, trashed its own struggle, and became the party of airports and ‘Progressive Punjab’ summits and cheque distribution at sangat darshans, managing its administration through halqa-incharges. Once out of power, it merely put up a show of being the opposition, but basically wanted to merely wait it out.

When the ‘party of history’ came to power, it dumped the history, forgot the legacy, trashed its own struggle, and became the party of airports and ‘Progressive Punjab’ summits and cheque distribution at sangat darshans, managing its administration through halqa-incharges. Once out of power, it merely put up a show of being the opposition, but basically wanted to merely wait it out.

The people saw that. They never saw the party as Opposition. They just saw it as one waiting for its turn at the wheel.

The minions had little choice. They were given little choice. There was never any party. It was always the House. So, the minions also never fought. They, too, waited. And as they waited, they hailed The Leader. The Leader is now too big, a monolith. He has to be propped up at all times because he cannot be allowed to fall. After all, he is the face and the body of the party. Down below and deep inside, there is nothing to the party. It is all hollow.

The Leader faces little threat because he believes in nothing. He has not taught the minions to believe in anything, so they, too, cannot threaten. When you believe in nothing, there is nothing that you need to desist from doing if there is some advantage that can be accrued. 

The Leader is helped by others. By those outside his party. They, too, are chips of the same block. They, too, are leaders of the same league. “Baki vee sab same ne,” goes the argument. So why change?

“Can one leader be any different from the other? Does any leader live by any ideals?” Then why blame The Leader? Why blame a particular leader? The flaw is systemic. So we can live with The Leader.

No one mentions the “shrinking universe of morals.” The ideas and ideology which constituted the foundation of the party no longer permeate or resonate with those outside the party or organisation, just as they no longer motivate those inside it. 

Once you shun ideology, the movement becomes a party. Then it becomes a mere electoral machine. So it has to ‘adjust’. Adjustment means compromises. It becomes an acceptable language. Even acceptable formulation. Soon, it is raised to the level of an ideology.

But the transformation doesn’t stop there. Indeed, it has just begun. For the character of the one who has wrested the top office, stamps itself on the entire organisation, on every level of the organisation. His very success legitimises ambition, greed, intrigue, and double-dealing. 

Once you shun ideology, the movement becomes a party. Then it becomes a mere electoral machine. So it has to ‘adjust’. Adjustment means compromises. It becomes an acceptable language. Even acceptable formulation. Soon, it is raised to the level of an ideology.

It becomes imperative for The Leader that the only voices raised are the ones that hail him. So he ensures that all gatherings unanimously resolve to leave the choice of nominating all office-bearers to him. The party hierarchy comes to consist entirely of the nominees of The Leader, and of those who, for the moment, have managed to insinuate themselves into the good books of The Leader.  

In reality, the stronger that The Leader and his circle appear, the weaker is the organisation. Power now flows solely from The Leader. Did he not tell you that even when out of power, top civil servants and police officers take his calls, kowtow to his diktats? 

People had given The Leader a new job in 2017, a job to be a  leader in the opposition, if not that of the Leader of the Opposition. He never showed up for the job. He would say, “Don’t worry, it is just a matter of time. It will pass quickly.” Basically, he was earlier a ruler, then he was waiting to be a ruler. He never had the time or the energy for being a leader in the opposition. 

As a result, he could never distance himself from the worsened situation that Punjab finds itself in. He never claimed he was working hard to unravel what had gone wrong. Instead, he kept telling people that they had made a mistake, that he was the one who understood their problems, that he alone had the solution, that people must rectify their mistake and put him back into the seat of power, and that he would be the engine who could pull us ahead.

The idea of taking along a citizenry, asking tough questions, talking about limitations in the given scenario of the Centre-State relationship, preparing people for a new politics—all this involves an effort to understand why things are the way they are, and what must be done to move forward. 

This was a tough task, but one that was most respectable. The Leader never undertook that task. He kept up with his shenanigans. He thought that all he needed to do was to indulge in some time pass to take another crack at regaining power in 2022. 

That’s not what Punjab had bargained for. 

The state saw one of the biggest community-building exercises in the world. The Leader supported it wholeheartedly, but it still did not count. Because the people saw that The Leader’s support was tactical. That his heart was not in it. That for him, it was a calculation at worst or a non-choice at best.

In reality, he stayed aloof from it. He declared support but did not work towards achieving that agenda. He welcomed the movement, but never participated in it. He hailed those who did sewa, but never showed up for sewa. He hailed the fight but was not seen among the fighters.

That’s why he couldn’t benefit from the triple jackpot of a non-functional Amarinder Singh government, an unpredictable Congress president and a Tom & Jerry showman like Channi sitting in the hot seat for a few wintery months and an Aam Aadmi Party that is telling the people of Punjab to trust a man with a broom who comes from Uttar Pradesh, sits in Delhi and sings the same tune that Modi and Amit Shah have perfected.

The Shiromani Akali Dal couldn’t benefit from the triple jackpot of a non-functional Amarinder Singh government, an unpredictable Congress president and a Tom & Jerry showman like Channi sitting in the hot seat for a few wintery months and an Aam Aadmi Party that is telling the people of Punjab to trust a man with a broom who comes from Uttar Pradesh, sits in Delhi and sings the same tune that Modi and Amit Shah have perfected.

To not travel any distance between 2017 and 2022, and not let anyone else occupy the Number One Object of Hatred position is a singular achievement. Not everyone can do that. That’s the reason SAD is not drawing many bets in the Satta bazaar. If you are not perceived as currency in a gambler’s den, you don’t count for much.

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

That’s how the business of politics works. I hate to add another quote from Animal Farm, but prey, why not yield to the temptation: “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

George Orwell understood us better. We need to catch up. After all, we are writing history with our conduct and understanding.