Some­thing sin­is­ter is hap­pen­ing to us, to the peo­ple in­ter­ested in Pun­jab pol­i­tics. We are track­ing an elec­toral cam­paign, watch­ing the shenani­gans of politi­cians of all hues, and won­der­ing if the newly formed SSM -Samyukta Samaj Mor­cha will un­der­cut the Aam Aadmi Party -AAP votes, if Con­gress will re­ally cor­ner a larger chunk of Dalit votes on ac­count of Chan­ni’s pro­jec­tion, or if the Akalis will emerge as a de­ci­sive fac­tor in a post-poll hung As­sem­bly sce­nario.

The de­bate around it is so riv­et­ing, our pun­ditry at num­bers of seats or vote per­cent­age so in­tri­cate and our knowl­edge of the Ravi­da­sia/​Valmiki/​Aad­harmi in­tra-com­mu­nity con­flicts so ab­struse that we have com­pletely for­got­ten what pol­i­tics is all about.

 

We are so en­meshed in try­ing to de­duce or sec­ond guess the power per­mu­ta­tions and com­bi­na­tions that we have lost sight of a rather ab­stract en­tity called the peo­ple.

Peo­ple, as in hu­man be­ings. Liv­ing, breath­ing hu­man be­ings.

Pro­fes­sors of uni­ver­si­ties, from whom one could have ex­pected bet­ter since they are in­vari­ably well-read about eth­i­cal de­bates and could be de­pended upon to raise red flags the mo­ment our po­lit­i­cal dis­course got off the tracks, have them­selves turned into ham jour­nal­ists, pro­duc­ing YouTube pro­grams and ac­tu­ally (re­peat, ac­tu­ally!) cir­cu­lat­ing them via What­sApp groups and Face­book posts.

Pun­jab is now watch­ing a po­lit­i­cal dis­course that has sim­ply dodged all ma­jor ques­tions af­fect­ing the lives of Pun­jabis.

Politi­cians are not un­der any pres­sure to ad­dress how the life of an or­di­nary per­son will be im­proved via their pol­i­tics. The ques­tion of rural as well as ur­ban poverty is no more a part of the pol­i­tics of any party. An­nounc­ing some cash trans­fers on a monthly ba­sis is a recog­ni­tion of an ex­treme symp­tom of some ma­lig­nant dis­ease af­fect­ing vast sec­tions of so­ci­ety; it is not the same as talk­ing of any pos­si­ble treat­ment.

Even the best of the politi­cians is ad­dress­ing, at the most, some con­cerns of the lower mid­dle class. The poor, as de­fined by any of the end­less com­mit­tees of Plan­ning Com­mis­sion/​Niti Aayog, do not fig­ure in any po­lit­i­cal dis­course, ex­cept one about pos­si­ble buy­ing of votes, or be­ing be­stowed with some hard cash.

Pun­jab is now watch­ing a po­lit­i­cal dis­course that has sim­ply dodged all ma­jor ques­tions af­fect­ing the lives of Pun­jabis.

The talk about giv­ing peo­ple bet­ter schools – by which I un­der­stand bet­ter school build­ings, in­fra­struc­ture, ad­e­quate teach­ers and staff – is not backed up by any fur­ther sup­ple­men­tary talk about what ed­u­ca­tion to im­part. Pun­jab’s pol­i­tics has re­fused to en­gage with the very way ‘school ed­u­ca­tion’ is ad­min­is­tered. This pol­i­tics has not even broached the idea of free­ing ed­u­ca­tion from the vice-like grip of fed­eral au­thor­i­ties who can tweak an en­tire lot of text­books with a par­tic­u­lar ide­o­log­i­cal view­point and then the best schools would have lit­tle choice but to teach those text­books.

The pol­i­tics is bereft of the larger chal­lenges posed by com­pletely di­lap­i­dated pub­lic health­care in­fra­struc­ture and a lout pri­vate health sec­tor com­mit­ting day­light rob­bery and tar­get­ting even the rich when they are at their weak­est: suf­fer­ing a stroke, caught in an ac­ci­dent, bleed­ing, strug­gling to breathe, or sim­ply dy­ing!

A sys­tem that can­not take care of the rich can­not take care of the poor. If you do not un­der­stand that, you do not un­der­stand pol­i­tics.

The inane talk of mo­halla clin­ics is far too lim­ited an in­ter­ven­tion, but why is it a source of worry?

The inane talk of mo­halla clin­ics is far too lim­ited an in­ter­ven­tion, but why is it a source of worry? Af­ter all, it at least holds a promise or at least a kind of lim­ited as­sur­ance about mak­ing ba­sic health­care avail­able at one’s doorstep. Be­cause while mo­halla clin­ics do not have a bad record in Delhi and some­thing like this might be ap­pre­ci­ated in Pun­jab, the fact is that a pol­i­tics that tries to sell them as its best idea rather than as the min­i­mal first step clearly is­n’t wor­ried about your health. It is wor­ried about how many votes will it scoop up from those houses where some­one sick is fight­ing a los­ing bat­tle be­cause he or she can­not even af­ford the most ba­sic of the med­i­cines or treat­ment.

A sys­tem that can­not take care of the rich can­not take care of the poor. If you do not un­der­stand that, you do not un­der­stand pol­i­tics.

When the most re­formists of the politi­cians or po­lit­i­cal par­ties start gnaw­ing at the most de­prived sec­tions of the pop­u­lace for votes, then you might as well have en­tered a Dar­win­ian race for po­lit­i­cal sur­vival, but you are nowhere close to a game called pol­i­tics.

Pol­i­tics is a higher call­ing. It en­tails pub­lic pol­icy for max­i­mum good for a max­i­mum num­ber of peo­ple while caus­ing min­i­mal harm to a min­i­mal num­ber of peo­ple. Pol­i­tics is al­most a Utopian pur­suit of the greater good. We all need Utopias in or­der to keep ori­ented our in­ner po­lit­i­cal moral com­pass.

Pun­jab, at the mo­ment, not only seems to have lost its moral com­pass; but even more dan­ger­ously, it seems to have con­vinced it­self that it no more needs a moral com­pass, that such an idea is a ves­ti­gial one in mod­ern times.

Pol­i­tics is a higher call­ing. It en­tails pub­lic pol­icy for max­i­mum good for a max­i­mum num­ber of peo­ple while caus­ing min­i­mal harm to a min­i­mal num­ber of peo­ple.

Pol­i­tics, po­lit­i­cal analy­sis, po­lit­i­cal nar­ra­tives, power strug­gles, and the dis­course of the pow­er­ful – politi­cians, me­dia, uni­ver­sity pro­fes­sors, pro­fes­sion­als – is now so clearly and un­am­bigu­ously cen­tred around the idea of ac­tual ex­ec­u­tive power that it has be­come com­pletely shorn of any pol­i­tics.

Just re­call when was the last time you heard a politi­cian, a jour­nal­ist, a pro­fes­sor, a prac­ti­tioner in any realm of the game of power talk about how every­one will have enough to eat, enough space to grow, enough se­cu­rity to nur­ture his or her chil­dren or ideas, and have an hon­est shot at des­tiny. That was when you last heard any­one talk­ing about this thing called pol­i­tics.

Pol­i­tics is al­most a Utopian pur­suit of the greater good. We all need Utopias in or­der to keep ori­ented our in­ner po­lit­i­cal moral com­pass.

Re­call one of the 20th cen­tu­ry’s most de­press­ing great nov­els. When all is lost, and the last rai­ment of civil­i­sa­tion is torn away, comes the line: “We did every­thing adults would do. What went wrong?” William Gold­ing could have said this about Pun­jab. We have be­come Lords of the Flies.