Biggest issue may not be most decisive

The biggest issue in Punjab is the crisis in the agrarian sector that has begun to hit the Green Revolution belt as well. You would expect this to work in favour of the Akalis. But the logic of Punjab politics is such that the biggest issue may not determine the electoral outcome. The Jat Sikh community, hit most by the agrarian slowdown, has never been a Congress supporter. This issue can yield only marginal gains to Akalis.

8226; Does the religious divide matter?

This election may be much less about religion than any other election in recent times. True, the Shiromani Akali Dal continues to be one of the few denominational parties in the country, intimately linked to gurudwara politics. The BJP, notwithstanding Navjot Singh Sidhu, is principally a party representing the interests and anxieties of the minority Hindus.

Sikhs and Hindus are concentrated in different parts of the state. Rural areas are mostly dominated by Sikhs; most cities are dominated by Hindus. Incidentally, that makes the Akali-BJP alliance possible and necessary. The Congress does not represent any one religion, and draws votes from both, though Congress politicians have also been deeply mired in religious politics.

Paradoxically, it is because of this pre-eminence of religion that, in the last instance, religion does not matter. Both contenders for power represent both religious communities. The communal tension associated with the days of militancy has subsided.

8226; Then is it about caste?

On the face of it, caste doesn8217;t operate in Punjab in the way it does in the rest of India. This is one of the few states that has never seen upper-caste dominance. Yet, if you don8217;t see caste as traditional jatis but as social blocks invented for the purpose of politics, then caste matters in Punjab.

The Sikhs, about 60 per cent of the electorate, are not a monolith. The rural, agriculture-based Jat-Sikh community, about one-third of the state8217;s population, can be called the Akali 8216;vote bank8217;. The Akalis depend upon other caste groups for additional votes to tip the scale. That8217;s where the problem lies. The urban trading Sikh community may be swayed by one of its own occupying the nation8217;s highest post. Sikh OBCs have been equally divided between Akalis and Congress.

8226; What about the Dalit vote?

Punjab has one of the highest Dalit populations in the country 8212; about 29 per cent 8212; almost equally Hindu and Sikh. For them, being Dalit matters more than their being Hindu or Sikh. They don8217;t go along with a general Sikh mobilisation. They have tended to favour the Congress, and lately the BSP. Within Dalits, the Ravidasis Kanshi Ram8217;s community and the equivalent of Uttar Pradesh8217;s Jatavs have turned more towards the BSP while the Balmikis and the Mazhabis have so far remained loyal to the Congress. The questions this time are: will the absence of Kanshi Ram hit the BSP and whether the Congress will be hit by disaffection among Balmikis over the end to their sub-quota in reservations.

8226; What about governance?

While caste and religion matter in determining the initial inclinations of social groups, they are not decisive in electoral outcomes. What matters between two successive elections is not so much the changing caste and community combination 8212; these are more or less given 8212; but the record of governance.

The logic of incumbency will work against the Congress. At the same time, the Akali-BJP need to speak to the issues that matter to groups which have not been their traditional constituency. They cannot depend only on the issue of agrarian crisis. They need to ensure that some of the secondary issues become the electoral tipping point.

The writer is a psephologist and political scientist at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi