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.