CAPTAIN’S

Punjab is in grip of social, economic crises. Amarinder government must use its mandate to administer bitter pills

AS AMARINDER SINGH is sworn in as Punjab chief minister for the second time, he can take justifiable pride in the moment. Sidelined by the Congress high command, he fought back to be renamed the president of the party’s state unit. In the run-up to the elections, factionalism was a continuing problem. But Amarinder mostly played the pacifist, reaching out to former enemies, even gamely going along with Delhi’s decision on a head-to-head contest between him and Akali stalwart Parkash Singh Badal. The unusally long ticket allotment spoke to a fraught process in which demands of local bosses and factions had to be accommodated. At times, the 75-year-old veteran seemed the worse for the wear, and his relaxed approach to the campaign had many insiders worried. But the decisive victory should now give him a free hand. As the Congress results in UP and Uttarakhand have shown, an election strategist can only do so much. In the end, it is the connect between the politician and the voter that makes a winning difference. The party’s tally of 77 out of 117 seats is the most decisive mandate that the Congress, contesting on its own, without allies, has received in recent times, more than the previous two SAD-BJP victories in the state. Significantly, for the first time in Punjab, there was a third player in the form of the Aam Aadmi Party, which made the contest triangular, and that much harder to win. In a situation of national doom and gloom for the Congress, Amarinder’s victory is a ray of hope for the party.

While the vote was clearly one of anger against the 10 years of SAD-BJP rule, that the voters chose to vent pointedly in favour of the Congress, rather than the AAP, means there are huge expectations from the party. Amarinder’s challenge now is to match up to them. The Congress manifesto succumbed to the competitive populism that elections seem to bring out in political parties. Aside from the pledge to root out the drug menace in four weeks, chief among his promises are farm loan waivers and a job for one person in every family. Perhaps the simplest and least expensive is the promise of a smartphone to 50 lakh youth. Meanwhile, the state’s finances are in the red, with the free spending Badal government bequeathing to its successor a debt of Rs 1.25 lakh crore.

Punjab is today in the grip of a severe economic and social crisis, fuelled by unsustainable agriculture and bad farming practices, virtually no industry, therefore, the absence of real jobs, poorly educated or skilled youth, topped by the widespread availability of, and addiction to, narcotic drugs. Beyond finding the money for the freebie bonanza, Amarinder’s government will need to focus on finding solutions to these. It may mean administering a bitter pill, but the generous mandate empowers the incoming government to take tough decisions. THE BJP’S MONUMENTAL electoral triumph in Uttar Pradesh, especially after a massive victory in the state’s parliamentary elections in 2014, invites reflection on two important political concepts: Dominance and hegemony. The BJP’S political dominance is now a commonplace observation, but some of the most thoughtful political commentators have also started speaking of BJP’S hegemony. The issue is not simply semantic. Real political matters are involved. And the success of future political strategies might well depend on which concept best captures the realities of Narendra Modi’s India.

Let us start with the differences between Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, viewed as the two most powerful leaders of India after Independence. What was the nature of their power and the polity they ruled? Which one does Modi resemble most? Where might a polity ruled by Modi be headed?

The basic question here is not about Modi’s economics, which is fundamentally different from Nehru’s and Indira Gandhi’s, both of whom were on the left. While Modi is no free market proponent, he is best described as right of centre on economics. The question about hegemony and domination concentrates on politics, not economics.

The basic difference between hegemony and dominance is that the former represents power stemming from persuasion, the latter, power from coercion. In democracies, we don’t get pure hegemony or pure dominance. Hegemony is often associated with totalitarian polities, like communism on the left and fascism on the right. The Soviet Union and Maoist China did exercise coercion, but most minds had been ideologically captured. Even the non-state citizen space, the so-called civil society, was inhabited by ideologically conforming and state-supporting organisations.

Democracies construct hegemony differently. They allow freedom to civil society; opposition parties also openly contest the government. They don’t curtail freedom of speech. Even with such freedoms and adversarial opportunities, the power of the Congress party under Nehru spread to all parts of India, with the exception of Kashmir and parts of the Northeast. Only in 1957, 10 years into Nehru’s tenure as PM, did one state,