Debacle clouds Brand Badal
It’s curtains for Shiromani Akali Dal patriarch Parkash Singh Badal, who strode Punjab like a colossus for 69 years. Badal, who at 89 was the oldest chief minister in the country, was on way out on Saturday after his SAD clocked it worst-ever tally of 15 in the 117-member Punjab assembly.
CHANDIGARH: It’s curtains for Shiromani Akali Dal patriarch Parkash Singh Badal, who strode Punjab like a colossus for 69 years.
Badal, who at 89 was the oldest chief minister in the country, was on way out on Saturday after his SAD clocked it worstever tally of 15 in the 117-member Punjab assembly.
The man who owed his almost 70-year-long political innings to his extraordinary connect with people failed to gauge their mood and was vanquished by the Congress led by former Patiala royal Capt Amarinder Singh.
Badal, however, can draw some consolation from his win over Amarinder from his stronghold of Lambi.
But it’s an unceremonious exit for the five-time chief minister, who had a shoe hurled at him in the run-up to the election, a reflection of growing discontent against his government over corruption and widespread drug abuse in the border state.
It must have come as a shock to Badal who practised decorum in political discourse, said Jagroop Sekhon of political science department in Amritsar’s Guru Nanak Dev University.
It also marks the end of bridge or moderate politics that came to define Badal.
Despite being a staunch Akali, Badal was a great reconciler, said Ashutosh Kumar, who teaches political science at Chandigarh’s Panjab University. He didn’t adopt an antiHindu or anti-India stance even when the Sikh insurgency was at its peak, Kumar said.
An11-time MLA, Badal transformed the panthic party, with focus firmly on Sikhs, into a Punjabi party that fielded 11 Hindus in the 2012 polls.
For Hindus, who account for 47% of Punjab’s population, he was the biggest guarantor of peace after the end of militancy. Badal counted farmers as his support base and doled out subsidies as he also wooed the Dalits, who account for 31.9% of the state’s population.
But the largesse made both the peasantry and the Dalits dependent on doles. The green revolution had run its course but Badal failed to show the way ahead.
Punjab declined under Badal. Once among the five richest states of the country, Punjab’s gross domestic product now ranks 12th.
Not just farm distress, he left the emotive Satluj Yamuna Link canal issue unresolved. He also dealt a blow to the Sikh polity by undermining the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee and Akal Takht.
But, the most damning charge against him was of nepotism --turning SAD into a family fare.
His cabinet had three members of his family – son Sukhbir Badal, son-in-law Adesh Partap Singh Kairon and Sukhbir’s brother-in-law Bikram Singh Majithia.
To prop Sukhbir as his heir and to ensure a smooth sailing for him, Badal allocated tickets to the kin of his party leaders, decimating the party’s cadre structure.
Charges of corruption and drug abuse led to his downfall. “People may blame Sukhbir, but it happened under Badal’s watch,” Sekhon said.
Badal has been a survivor. That he will live on in the history of Punjab is a given. Whether his party will be able to survive under his son is another matter.