One year of Captain Amarinder Singh: Year after take-off, ground still to cover

Ironically, the responses underlined an open secret of the last one year: Amarinder Singh, who led the Congress back to power on this day in 2017, and will complete one year in office on March 17, has hardly toured his state in the last 12 months.

In this one year, the Congress government has removed red beacons from VIP cars, started rolling out a loan waiver scheme, claims to have broken the back of drug supplies, has been roiled by a controversy in the sand mining auctions that claimed Rana Gurjit’s ministership, and was forced to crack down on an extortion racket allegedly being run by a minister’s relative.

But, say many political observers, the most conspicuous change since the Shiromani Akali Dal government gave way to the Congress is this: a chief minister who runs the state through bureaucrats, and keeps his engagement with people to the bare minimum.

The change of style is dramatic, especially as Amarinder’s predecessor Parkash Singh Badal was out in the villages of Punjab almost every week. In the 10 years that the Akali Dal was in power from 2007-2017, Badal conducted hundreds of “sangat darshans”, while his son Sukhbir Badal, the deputy chief minister, micro-managed the work of governance, to the extent of overwhelming the bureaucracy.

While Badal’s public engagements were criticised for favouring villages loyal to the Akali Dal, the widely held impression was of an accessible Chief Minister, and of Sukhbir as the “go to guy” without whose say so no government plan moved.

In contrast, Amarinder remains sequestered in his official home in Chandigarh, where he has set up a camp office, doing away altogether with going to his office at the Secretariat. His Chief Principal Secretary, Suresh Kumar, is the de facto number 2 in the government, prompting criticism that this government is more bureaucratic than political, and that people do not get a “sunwayi” in bureaucratic governance. In response to a question from The Indian Express, Amarinder brushed aside that criticism.

“The government’s job is not to rule, but to administrate and govern, and that is not something that can be done by the Chief Minister alone. He has to depend on his cabinet colleagues and the bureaucracy that manages the various department which constitutes the government machinery… my job is to formulate policy guidelines and show the direction, not get into the nitty gritty of execution,” Amarinder said.

He also said he had made many visits to Punjab – the CM’s media adviser Raveen Thukral later pegged the number at 42 — and said the “so-called perception” that he was not engaged with people “is a mere creation of the Opposition”. While Thukral said he was unable to provide an exact breakdown of Amarinder’s Punjab tours over the weekend, The Indian Express spoke to officials across Punjab’s 20 districts, who had information of 25 official visits, excluding visits to Mohali.

His first visit after taking office on March 17 was on May 7, when he travelled to Tarn Taran to condole the family of soldier Paramjeet Singh who was killed and his body mutilated at the LoC in Poonch. On the same overnight trip, he also visited Amritsar and the Golden Temple the next day for the first time since his election.

The visits have included short, restricted formal trips to meet dignitaries. He was in Hussainiwala when Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh visited the National Martyr’s Memorial; in Amritsar to meet Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last month, in August to inaugurate the newly added sections of the Partition Museum, and in December to meet the London Mayor. He met former PM Manmohan Singh at Anandpur Sahib in December. He inaugurated a tractor factory in Hoshiarpur, and a food processing factor in Kapurthala, and a Seva Kendra in Patiala.

He was in Mansa in August to inspect a white fly attack on cotton crops but has not otherwise spent any time in the outer reaches of the Malwa belt. Amarinder’s widest public engagement was in Gurdaspur where he campaigned for the October 9 Lok Sabha bypoll. He visited Ludhiana to meet the families of people who died, including firemen, when a factory collapsed in a blaze in November; and kicked off the loan waiver scheme in Mansa in January.

For many public engagements, Amarinder is known for ducking out at the last minute and sending other ministers. He skipped his first big public engagement after election, the Baisakhi rally at Talwandi Sabo last year, sending Manpreet Badal and Congressman Lal Singh instead. He sent Rana Gurjit to the annual state-level function at Bhagat Singh’s birth place Khatkar Kalan last March. He passed two big annual rallies, one at Khadoor Sahib and Baba Bakala.

Ashutosh Kumar, who teaches political science at Panjab University, said Amarinder’s style is in keeping with his royal tag. “He has never known to have connected with the masses. But other aspects of his personality, such as his ‘dabang’ image, when he speaks against militancy, attract people to him.”

The ground in Punjab that Amarinder has left untravelled is fast becoming a metaphor for the difficult issues that the government is yet to take on, especially on the economic front. Ashutosh said while one welcomed the difference from the previous government was that Amarinder personally not been accused of any wrong doing, the government was “lacking in energy and ideas to address the real issues” of unemployment, drugs, health and education.

Dr Parmod Kumar of the Chandigarh-based Institute of Development and Communication said Punjab needed a “paradigm” shift”. “The government is yet to pay attention to initiate long-term policy interventions. It is preoccupied with finding ways and means to implement populist promises. They are trying to find simplistic solutions to complex problems,” he said.

Sunil Kumar Jakhar, Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee chief, said while there were “sporadic”cases of wrongdoing, the Congress government had done a lot of “cleansing”. He said the biggest achievement had been the removal of the rule by “oppression” of the previous government. For the Shiromani Akali Dal, it was “a year of complete failure of governance” and of “betrayal” of the people.

“Congress had promised to waive off all farm loans in the first Cabinet meeting. It had promised to end the menace of drugs in four weeks, had promised 25 lakh jobs. It has done nothing,” spokesperson Daljit Singh Cheema said. “One minister had to resign due to a corruption scandal. Sand mafia and goonda tax remained the talking points in one year. What Chief Minister saw from his helicopter last week was the reality of Punjab for the past one year”.

Jakhar said all criticism was unfounded. “A lot needs to be done. But it is just one year. Nobody should be in a rush. People are hopeful that the government will put everything in place,” he said.