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Fear the death of politics
What will
explode first? Will the farmers hit back violently rather than
committing suicide? Or will their progeny take to the gun?
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 ChorHain’? Nothing could be worse for a society than the
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.
27 September, 2006
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