How does one even be­gin to un­der­stand a ver­dict as mas­sive as 92 seats in a house of 117 leg­is­la­tors? As the two tra­di­tional par­ties, both more than a cen­tury old, fell by the way­side, and a rank out­sider rode to power rid­ing a wave of anger, alien­ation and vengeance, Pun­jab needs to grap­ple with some se­ri­ous ques­tions about body polity.

Elec­toral pol­i­tics in Pun­jab has long been shorn of ide­o­log­i­cal di­men­sions, but now there is a party in power whose claim to fame is the ab­sence of ide­ol­ogy.

With rhetoric like “work­ing for the peo­ple” and |build­ing a new In­dia”, Arvind Ke­jri­wal’s Aam Aadmi Party runs its pol­i­tics in ways ag­nos­tic to legacy, her­itage or any­thing re­sem­bling ‘Pun­jabiy­at’.

In a world so com­pletely ded­i­cated to the pur­suit of ma­te­ri­al­ism, was it in­evitable that Pun­jabis align their po­lit­i­cal for­tunes to the pol­i­tics of plain trans­ac­tions: free elec­tric­ity units, guar­an­teed ser­vice de­liv­ery and Ke­jri­wal's guar­an­tees, what­ever those might be worth?

This de­bate, an­chored by Se­nior Jour­nal­ist SP Singh, is an ef­fort in un­der­stand­ing this 92/​117 ver­dict and the con­comi­tant chal­lenges, im­pli­ca­tions and fu­ture por­tents.

The con­ver­sa­tion fea­tures se­nior jour­nal­ist Hamir Singh, his­to­rian, for­mer AAP leader Dr Sumail Singh Sidhu and aca­d­e­mi­cian-com­men­ta­tor Har­jesh­war Pal Singh, and seeks to ex­plore if pol­i­tics has de­ci­sively moved from po­lit­i­cal agen­das to a de­politi­cised trans­ac­tional re­la­tion­ship of power with peo­ple?

Pan­el­lists grap­ple with many as­pects, in­clud­ing re­gional as­pi­ra­tions, the dec­i­ma­tion of es­tab­lished par­ties, and the whole­sale seem­ingly grudge vote for “bad­laav”.

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

Still more per­ti­nent ques­tions: How will the pan­thic con­cerns and Pun­jab’s legacy is­sues be ad­dressed by this new dis­pen­sa­tion, and how will par­ties like the Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal and Con­gress now find their rel­e­vance in the new mi­lieu?

 Read also: Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal: Where did the party lose the plot?

For how long will this Arvind Ke­jri­wal work-from-home strat­egy work wherein he will try to run the party via re­mote con­trol from Delhi, or will a Pun­jab AAP emerge from within its ranks to guard, speak up for and own the turf called Pun­jab, Pun­jabi, Pun­jabiyat?