EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Beyond the coincidental fact that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in Punjab completes a year in office in mid-March, the frontier state is in the news for all the wrong reasons. Bhagwant Mann, the voluble 49-year-old comedian-turned-politician chief minister, is confronted with disturbing scenes on the ground that make for an inflammable cocktail of politics, religion and social ferment. Without a doubt, India’s frontline state is ailing and in need of urgent corrective action. Whether you see it as a social space or, in strategic terms, as a border province, anybody who remembers what the ’80s were like would not like a rerun. Over the decades, Punjab politics was bipolar and rotated between the two dominant parties—the Akali Dal and the Congress. By and large, they governed for long stable stretches. All that changed in March 2022, when AAP stormed to power with a landslide victory, winning 92 of the total 117 seats, decimating in the process both the Congress and the Akalis. This was a radical change as it was apparent both parties had lost the trust of the electorate and they had decided to give a fledgling party like AAP a chance. Arvind Kejriwal, the president of AAP and chief minister of Delhi, promised to transform the state on the same model as Delhi, offering several free sops like electricity and world-class education and health facilities. But Mann and AAP have so far only flattered to deceive. What we see is a scenario of statewide discontent. There is a renewed surge of religious radicalism, rampant gangland violence on its fringes, and an unending symphony of protesting voices from the farms. All of it points to a deep anger simmering at the core of Punjab’s polity. Probably what is most worrying is the law and order situation, which seems to have worsened since the AAP government took over. It started with the broad daylight murder of singer Sidhu Moosewala, whose gun-toting figure still adorns T-shirts selling in mofussil markets, and the rocket attack on the police intelligence headquarters last summer. Those were still early days for the Mann government, so no direct blame-taking was expected. It was, after all, the carryover of a mess that predated AAP’s arrival. But religion-tinged violence kept stalking Punjab: Hindutva radical Sudhir Suri and a Dera follower accused in a sacrilege case were both gunned down in November. And now, the unseemly siege on a police station in Ajnala by newly-minted Sikh radical Amritpal Singh Sandhu and his sword-wielding cohort last week was followed by immediate capitulation: the release of his aide Lovepreet Singh ‘Toofan’, an accused in a kidnapping case, was a classic sign of loss of nerve. Now, cross-match all this against one conspicuous absence: since July 2022, Punjab has not had a regular Director General of Police (DGP). The sense of drift goes beyond law and order, beyond the spectacle of gangsterism cohabiting with religious radicalism, to other realms of governance. It goes beyond even the CM’s faceoffs with Governor Banwarilal Purohit on sundry appointments and other administrative matters—this has, after all, been a regular phenomenon in all Opposition-ruled states in the NDA era. This rivalry has affected law and order too. Amritpal, the new flagbearer of Khalistan, has even threatened the prime minister and the home minister. But despite spouting hate speeches at will, he seems to have escaped the notice of the central agencies while they have often acted against others in the past for lesser wrongdoing. The Punjab economy continues to slide. It remains in a debt
As a political figure, Mann gives the impression of being remote-controlled by his party’s Delhi high command rather than being his own man. His gaffes display the inexperience of a rookie: BMW denied his claim, made on a Germany trip, that it was setting up a unit in Punjab; another claim that Goldy Brar had been arrested in the US was refuted by the gangster himself, appearing on news channels. The more worrying thought is that he has so far not demonstrated the acumen and experience to deal with a Punjab that is undergoing a profound crisis, a time of panthic churn when an old pro-Khalistan voice like Simranjit Mann can come out of the blue and get elected to Parliament with big numbers when protesters routinely call for the release of prisoners convicted on terrorism charges, and self-styled ‘preachers’ like Amritpal challenge the state as well as central governments with impunity. The Akali eclipse has led to a vacuum in the panthic space in Punjab, creating fundamental disequilibrium. Deputy Editor Anilesh S. Mahajan, who keeps a keen hawk-eye on his native state, also lists the positives in our cover story this week: the minimum support price on moong dal meant to draw farmers away from their over-reliance on paddy, the ‘one MLA, one pension’ scheme, the 500 ‘Aam Aadmi’ clinics and other welfarist initiatives. But a kind of foreboding underlies his words: “Punjab, still reeling from the aftermath of two decades of sectarian violence, is seeing a new social churn. The farm protests of 2020-21 and AAP’s spectacular victory in March 2022 were signs of restiveness stemming from a socio-economic crisis and markers of a deep desire for change. But the Mann regime’s lack of experience and fixation with the ‘Delhi Model’ are serious handicaps, given the state’s dire balance sheet.” With such a massive majority, Mann must utilise the opportunity to demonstrate who the boss is and seek the Centre’s cooperation to sort out the twin threats of violent radicalism and financial collapse, developing a true ‘Punjab model’. In the popular web series Game of Thrones, which has some parallels with the ongoing power play in Punjab, a protagonist says: “Chaos is not a pit...chaos is a ladder.” Mann has to climb that ladder so that the ghosts of the state’s troubled past don’t haunt us again. Failure is not an option. trap. Its debt to GSDP ratio is projected to be 47.6 per cent this year, well over double the Finance Commission’s 20 per cent limit for states. The AAP government has only pushed it closer to a financial abyss. In just nine months of its rule, until December 2022, the cash-strapped state had to borrow Rs 30,000 crore. The state’s books reveal a consolidated debt of Rs 2.83 lakh crore, with expected revenues logging less than a third at Rs 95,378 crore this fiscal year. The debt is expected to cross Rs 3 lakh crore by the end of FY23. That rather dire picture is exacerbated by the fact that, till December-end, the state could realise only 63 per cent of its revenue target. A mounting power subsidy bill, with the free 300 units a month delivered as promised in July, is eating into the coffers. Clearly, AAP’s famed model of offering free or cheap basic utilities, built around Delhi’s revenue surplus, isn’t working out the same way in Punjab. So much so that it’s struggling to pay salaries; the state power utility had to borrow Rs 500 crore to fulfil that obligation.