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Akali Politics
in Dumb Times
Sansardeep Singh Wanjara
 On
Tuesday, out of blue, Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal
dropped a bombshell. Right in the middle of his election campaign in
Jalalabad, where he is fighting to become an MLA to take up his
Deputy CM perch to eventually sit in the CM’s chair, Sukhbir, in
true ‘Kaka ji’ fashion, pulled out an issue that most had thought
Akali Dal has completely forgotten.
“Disband the
Bhakhra Beas Management Board,” he said at a rally. “Hand over the
BBMB to Punjab,” the next rally was told. “The Central government is
robbing
Punjab of
its share through control of BBMB,” he said at another rally.
Jalalabad often
suffers because of water shortage. In the years preceding the
election, neither son Sukhbir, nor papa Badal, mentioned a word
about BBMB. Entire stress is often on turning Malwa into California,
and little is explained as to how a five star hotel in water starved
Bathinda will help.
But what makes
the Badals, and consequently the Akali Dal, the party that lords
over the Punjab Government, the SGPC, and in the given
circumstances, even the top temporal seats, completely forget Akali,
Sikh, Punjab issues and then gives them the cheek to fish out
suddenly the matter of BBMB or of Congress’ interference in Sikh
affairs?
It is largely,
and not only, the disconnect between the people and the politician’s
politics, but also our disinclination to track issues and ask
questions, stay engaged and be the watchmen. In the fashion of
Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony, we tend often to let our
minds and ideas to be ruled by the dominant social class represented
by the mainstream politician, by the Badals among the Sikhs, by the
Gandhis and the corporate world in India.
“Politics is a
dirty cesspool,” we are told. And we believe it. In this dirty
cesspool, the politician’s success is in managing to ensure that his
ideas are seen as the norm, as a sort of accepted universal
ideology. So we all almost tend to agree, in our drawing rooms, in
our gurdwaras, and even in family discussions with our kids, that
politics is a dirty cesspool.
In this dirty
cesspool, we rarely ask ourselves, how come a Sukhbir Singh Badal,
who remains so dedicated to serve the people of
Punjab
and the panth and spends every hour in thinking how to better their
lot, manages to earn an astonishing amount of income? By sheer
business sense, one is to presume.
He came from the
US after the heat of the Sikh aspirational movement was over and
almost directly plunged into social service, serving the panth in
the great tradition of his father. The 47-year-old, while fully
immersed in the service of the panth, has now said he currently has
Rs 3.50 lakh in cash, Rs 1.16 crore in deposits in banks and
financial institutions, Rs 20.27 crore in bonds and debentures of
Orbit Resorts and other companies, Rs 4.35 lakh in jewellery, Rs
4.45 crore in Metro Plaza and loans extended to his wife,
brother-in-law MLA Bikram Singh Majithia etc and Rs 4.80 lakh in
horses.
This is apart
from Rs 3.95 crore in agriculture land, including 39.6 acres of land
in village Badal, 14 biswas in Rajasthan’s Sadulshahr, 28 acres in
Balasar and 3.68 acres in Rania in Haryana. Add to this 7.6 acres of
land leased to Punjab national Bank in Badal village, a petrol pump,
Taj Motors, shops, cattle sheds, another 5.5 acre in Balasore for a
farm house of 11,450 square feet, a residential bungalow in
Chandigarh’s Sector 9, a house and stud farm in Badal village, a 15
per cent share in an SCO in Sector 9 of Chandigarh, a commercial
flat in Narain Manzil on Barakhamba Road. And we are not going into
his air conditioners and furniture and fixtures though we have the
details, all provided by him as per rules to the Election Commission
of India.
To be fair,
Sukhbir is no different from other politicians, and they all have to
provide these details when they have to fight any election. The
point is that all these details become public knowledge only when
the politician is forced to provide them. While Sukhbir is
completely within his rights to run his business affairs with as
much acumen as he can manage, the people too are completely in their
own right when they have a sense of wonder at the personal
development of the House of Badals.
But what
perturbs the ordinary Sikh is when these politicians tend to apply
the same norms to their conduct as Akali Dal leaders. Sukhbir and
every other Akali leader harks back to the great ideals of Sikhism
and the glorious traditions of the Sikh quom when it comes to
garnering Sikh votes. The long forgotten agendas of river waters,
Chandigarh and BBMB are pulled out of the bag to lure people and
play on their insecurities, but only to get their votes and then
forget all for another five years.
In these times
of dumbing down, the politician is the one who is succeeding more in
dumbing us down. We owe it to our future generations to resist and
turn back and ask, “But where were you earlier?” We need to engage
and ask, “But how did you become the leader?” We do this in this
edition on Page 12-13, and promise to do it on a regular basis.
22
July 2009
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