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Mera Rangla
Punjab
The Colors of Politics
Gian Inder Singh
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It takes police massive public pressure, including demands by a
minister and much bashing in the media, to arrest an Akali councilor
who had beaten up a Tehsildar and stripped him in full public view.
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It then takes many more days before another acolyte of Sukhbir Singh
Badal, Simarjit Singh Bains, is caught, that too after much public
pressure.
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Akali hoodlums breakdown the security gates of a jail and go and
meet the arrested councilor even as the minister for jails expresses
helplessness.
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None other than Bikram Singh Majithia, brother-in-law of Sukhbir,
violates all procedures and drives right inside the jail to hold an
illegal meeting with Simarjit Bains. After the media expose, the
government says it was raining, so the minister's car went inside
the jail!
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Staff of the jail has to resort to dharnas (protest sit ins) to
force the issue that Akali hoodlums are regularly breaking into
jails now.
 If
you need more examples of a total breakdown of law and order in
Punjab and direct complicity of the ruling classes in criminal
activities and open flouting of law and procedures, there will be
hundreds available.
Many sober elements within the Sikh community say they are only
happy that neither Prakash Singh Badal-Sukhbir Badal duo nor other
senior Akali leaders anymore call their government or party "panthic".
In fact, there is no end to Akali Dal workers, activists and leaders
now who do not even sport a turban. In fact, Kamaljit Singh Karwal,
the Akali councilor arrested for assaulting, beating and stripping
the tehsildar, Major (retd) G S Benipal, in Ludhiana, sports a
turban for official functions and Akali Dal's album's photograph but
ordinarily is clean shaven and dons a cap.
But what is important is the way the entire polity is being used to
only steal more money from the public coffers. Muscle, mafia and
money have become the fulcrums of politics in Punjab for a long
time, but it is the blatantness of it all that is now coming to the
fore and is even being projected as the norm.
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But what is important is the way the entire polity is being used
to only steal more money from the public coffers. Muscle, mafia
and money have become the fulcrums of politics in Punjab for a
long time, but it is the blatantness of it all that is now
coming to the fore and is even being projected as the norm. |
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What else can explain the a minister's cheek to explain away a
forced entry into the jail by a power centre MLA and family member
of the ruling Akali Dal president by saying that it was raining?
"Today, the jail guards were shocked and went on a dharna to
protest. Tomorrow, they will be admonished or will get a message by
this type of defense by a minister, and then it will become easy for
any mafia style politician to go get his man out from a jail for a
few days and then send him back. And it wouldn't have to even rain
then for all of this to happen," said a rather elderly Akali
leader.
Earlier examples of the high handedness of the ruling party are
aplenty, but the most important perhaps was the way the ruling party
hoodlums went about bashing opponents in the panchayat and nagar
palika local government bodies’ elections. So much so that even the
alliance partner BJP had to officially make complaints to its party
high command and threaten to quit the coalition government saying
its leaders and workers were badly beaten up, threatened and
browbeaten by Akali Dal hoodlums.
Punjab BJP president Rajinder Bhandari repeatedly went on record to
condemn the Akali Dal on the issue of such "unprecedented
violence".
The word watched the violence by anti-social elements against
largely the Sikhs after a leader of a Ballan shrine sect was shot
and killed in Vienna, Austria. For days, Punjab was at the mercy of
looter and blood thirsty mobs even as the Akali Dal spokespersons
and the CM were trying to placate the very elements that were
leading the mobs.
Now, the government has even directed to stop all probes into the
violence of those days because it may adversely affect the chances
of Akali Dal candidates in the three upcoming bye-elections.
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If such is the state of law and order, of our politicians, of
our democratic notions, and of our media, where are we headed
for? A world whose paradigm is decided by the democratic notions
of Bharat Inder Singh Chahal or Sukhbir Singh Badal is a world
worth living in only for those who are so beloved that their
supporters are breaking the gates of the jail to meet them. |
Coming back to the Akali councilors in jail. It was not just
Majithia who gate crashed into the jail. A day before that, some 350
Akali supporters of the arrested councilors Bains and Karwal, barged
into the Central jail. Mahesh Attri, an office-bearer of the Jail
Guards Association, said the supporters of the two leaders browbeat
the sentry at the entrance and manhandled the guards aside to enter
the jail when the gate was opened to let another inmate go inside
the jail. This forced the jail guards to go on a dharna.
After much adverse publicity in the media, police were forced to
book 70 unidentified youth workers for forcibly entering jail
premises. Ad for Majithia, he was blatant in way that comes perhaps
naturally if your notion of democracy flows from the high ideals set
by the House of Badals. He said he was the patron of the Youth Akali
Dal and it was his duty to visit the district president of the unit
Simarjit Bains.
But if such is the law and order situation, and such is the regard
for norms and procedures, no wonder small time Akali workers are
resorting to beating up engineers and line men of Punjab State
Electricity Board when they go to check power theft in villages.
 During
Amarinder Singh’s regime,
Punjab
saw a breakdown of machinery at one point with the entire police
machinery at the beck and call of a small coterie around the CM led
by his advisor BIS Chahal. Now, the Badals have made friends with
the same people who were around the same coterie.
And what is more significant is that they have learnt and adopted
the same methods. The Bharat Inder Singh Chahal doctrine is fully in
play. The entire media is managed in ways and routes opened by
Chahal, and Sukhbir has only further strengthened and enlarged the
scope of what can be made available. The same media men who were
seen as advisors hovering around Amarinder now hover around Sukhbir.
The decision to fly editors of
Chandigarh
based editions of national newspapers in helicopters to Bathinda to
witness the swearing in ceremony of Sukhbir Badal and then to seat
them on the stage with senior Akali Dal leaders even as the entire
Opposition boycotted the event was typical of how the Chahal
doctrine was fully in operation.
When the widespread violence engulfed
Punjab
after the
Vienna incident, police all across the state was busy trying to save
the air-conditioned buses of Orbit company owned by Sukhbir Singh
Badal. These buses were shepherded inside police thanas and the
official reason given was that because these were costly buses, they
had to be protected. The Punjab Roadways buses and private vehicles
of hundreds of people stranded on the road became the target of the
mobs.
Go
to any city and there is no end to the flex-printed hoardings of
local toughmen, mafia faces welcoming Sukhbir Singh Badal. Now there
is a rather new trend being noticed in the Punjabi media. In case of
death of even a minor leader, tens of advertisements for bhog appear
in the newspaper, each inserted by one or the other business house,
panchayat, political activist, public sector undertaking, mohalla
committee, or individual. Page after page is splashed with the same
mug of the dead person asking the people to join in for the bhog of
the deceased.
It
is an open secret among the journalists as well as wide sections of
readership as to how these advertisements are generated, and who is
making money out of all this. It is a separate matter that sections
of the media now think that they will not be held accountable for
such falling standards by upcoming generations.
 If
such is the state of law and order, of our politicians, of our
democratic notions, and of our media, where are we headed for? A
world whose paradigm is decided by the democratic notions of Bharat
Inder Singh Chahal or Sukhbir Singh Badal is a world worth living in
only for those who are so beloved that their supporters are breaking
the gates of the jail to meet them, or for whom the glory beyond
death means at least 45 advertisements splashed across 4 page
supplement of Ajit newspaper.
For the rest of us, it is time we re-engage with democratic values
and vow to re-construct a society in which our next generations can
study our conduct and see that we were not found with heads hung in
shame.
15
July 2009
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