Fear the death of politics
S P Singh
Politically dormant seasons are the proverbial silly seasons of politics. One never knows which of the simmering elements will explode into a problem of unforeseen dimensions. Punjab's Congress government led by Captain Amarinder Singh is talking in terms of investment potential of thousands of crores of rupees to take the state on a fast track route to development, but is pushing equally hard to forcibly acquire the fertile agricultural land of hundreds of farmers for one or the other industrialist's venture or for carving out the controversial Special Economic Zone.
Across Punjab, farmers are protesting. On Sunday and Monday, Punjab's farmers brought the train traffic to a grinding halt. Earlier, Chandigarh's Sector 17 witnessed a days' long siege by farmers. Violent incidents have been reported from several places in Punjab.
Compared to this, the national leadership of the Congress has sounded a warning at a conclave of the party's Chief Ministers in Nainital. Both Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh have asked that agricultural land not be acquired for SEZs and compensation must have logic as per market economy. Amarinder Singh was present and, we hope, listening. People still have to listen to what the CM will now have to say about his policies.
But the people did hear him on what he had to say about the Punjab Police. After the world watched men of Punjab Police brutally lathicharging the girls of veterinary university, the CM strongly defended his cops and said they were doing the right thing. Nothing could have shocked the middle classes more. As for the farmers or lower classes, they routinely suffer such treatment at the hands of the police at various dharnas or in police chowkis and thanas everyday.
Punjab Police has already beaten up doctors, lawyers, unemployed ETT teachers, unemployed B.Ed teachers, nurses asking for jobs or better wages and students protesting on the road. Photographs of a bunch of cops running after an old man are now staple media visuals.
To ward off such bad publicity, the Punjab Police will now look into a mirror. It will be called Punjab Police Darpan. This will be a PR magazine, a brainchild of Punjab DGP S S Virk, thought of, of course, during whatever time he could find when not dealing with his son-in-law and the latter's parents.
Amarinder Singh meanwhile is still dealing with the fallout of the Ludhiana City Centre scam, and the opposition Akali Dal is hell bent on keeping the momentum on by crowing about the very issue of corruption with which Amarinder had haunted the blue turbans all over Punjab.
Both Akalis and Congressmen are issuing huge advertisements in major dailies splashing mud at each other.
And it is anyone’s guess what will explode first? The farmers will hit back violently rather than committing suicide? Or their progeny will take to the gun to make an apathetic state listen? Or the unemployed will look for a way out in the theories advanced by naxal activists? Or the people at large will give up on the construct of a politician itself, concluding that ‘Sab Chor Hain’?
Nothing could be worse for a society than death of politics. And the most afraid of such an eventuality should be the politician himself. These are worrying times. And solutions don’t lie in issuing advertisements, publishing PR journals or fixing journalists through media advisers.
29 September, 2006