A new debate develops in Punjab

But in her own speech to the small gathering every party is forced to be frugal with large rallies under the ECs strict regime she promises that if voted to power,her government will double the amount in each of the welfare schemes in the SAD stable,be it pensions,the shagun scheme for SCs,or the free 5-marla plot of land,again for SCs. We will give 10 marlas instead of 5.

In another village,jeans-clad Bhagwant Mann,candidate of Manpreet Badals fledgling Punjab Peoples Party,is the partys vice-president and its star campaigner apart from being a famous comedian. I am a political satirist,I am not here to tell jokes, he tells The Indian Express,seriously. He addresses informal,under-the-tree assemblies where there is no security posse in sight and the only slogans that ring out are those of Inqilab Zindabad. Manns speeches alternate between poetry,jokey digs at the Congress,the SAD and their lal batti culture of privilege and collusion and emotion-filled laments of the proud Punjab that was. We dont want to make Punjab into California or Paris, he says. We want to bring Punjab back to Punjab… where the children have a future and leaders dont look down at the people from helicopters.

It is becoming clear that in an election in which many things remain the same family continues to tighten its grip over Dhindsas party as well as Bhattals,with both having relatives in politics the ruling SAD may have taken the lead in shifting the terms of the debate. Unlike in the past,it seldom talks of the Sikh panth-in-danger,and its once-familiar invocations of the spectre of a hostile Congress-led Centre are also fading. Instead the talk,now,is of development.

In the new discussion,the Congress can only match or outdo Akali talk on schemes. And the newcomer in the drama,which,along with delimitation and the rebel candidate,gives the contest a brand new uncertainty,plays the role of the outsider. The PPP points out that both the emperor and his challenger wear no clothes.

For all the limitations of its lead players and its inbuilt silences and closures,perhaps for the first time after the terrorism years,a new debate is being joined in Punjab: A state that always prided itself for being developed is debating development,be it in terms of delivery systems,subsidies,targeted welfare programmes or bijli-sadak-paani.

Conversations along the road from Chandigarh to Sunam frame the different,and contested,claims and meanings of development and governance in a primarily agricultural economy long after the gains of the Green Revolution have plateaued.

In Chandigarh,Pramod Kumar,chairman of the Governance Reforms Commission set up in 2009,lists steps towards governance reform in a state where the very notion of development is seen to be held hostage to political influence and bureaucratic corruption and delay. The Right to Services law has been enacted by the state,and in the last year or so,fard kendras and saanjh kendras have been set up across the state.

Fard kendras,outfitted with computers and a system of fixed fee for copies of land records,are meant to free revenue administration from the corrupt patwari-raj. Saanjh kendras are new spaces attached to the thana,where non-criminal complaints can now be registered and monitored online.

These changes took time,the bureaucracy had to be convinced,but it has happened, Pramod Kumar says. The SAD is showcasing these measures in its media campaign.

Along the road,reactions to these reforms range from lack of information,some tentative acknowledgment of their potential for change to outright disavowals of their efficacy and robust scepticism about their last-minute implementation in an election year. This is only an election stunt, says Surinder Singh,farmer and Congress block pradhan in Rampur kalan village in Rajpura. For four years they did nothing and even now these things are only being done in Akali-dominated areas, he says.

The problem in his village,he says,is electricity,or lack of its regular or predictable supply. They promised us eight hours,we dont get even five. Zamindars of my village have to sometimes go to water their fields at midnight even in winter, he says.

Just as fard kendras and saanjh kendras have come up only in election year,a plethora of populist and welfare schemes has surfaced in the last few months of the incumbent regime from a bicycle scheme for girl students to the dispatch of sports kits for gyms in village panchayat ghars.

By all accounts,the cycle scheme is not quite the game changer in Punjab that it was in a barer landscape in another election in Bihar. Punjab has a well-spread out public transport network. Here,as Kawaljit Singh points out,vacancies of teachers in government schools are the glaring problem,not transport for girls. Singh set up the Seaba International School in Lehragaga in 1998. When I set up my school,there was no properly functioning school in the area. Even after large-scale appointments,we need teachers,not cycles, he says. The sports kits for gyms are another matter.

Especially in the Sangrur-Mansa-Bathinda belt,the demand for the gym is matched only by the recurring talk about sports stadiums. The reason for both is the same: in this primarily rural belt,as holdings were subdivided and agriculture became unremunerative due to rising costs of inputs,a corrupt procurement system and absence of crop diversification,the next generation does not want to work in the fields. But with the government education system in tatters and private schooling overtaken by teaching shops,and with jobs hard to come by,according to popular lore,there was no place to go for the young and the restless. An entire generation is said to have surrendered to alcohol and drugs.

We used to sing the jugni and the heer, says PPPs Bhagwant Mann. Now we drink it. Both are names of popular alcohol brands. If only we had a gym or stadium in every town and village… is a commonly heard lament in these parts.

In the Sangrur-Mansa-Bathinda belt,development has a more basic meaning: it means safe drinking water. With ground water contaminated by decades of pesticide use and unregulated industrial waste,the water here is not safe to drink.

The problem is particularly bad in Lehragaga,say residents. The government has set up RO systems in some villages,but in towns private entrepreneurs supply water campers to homes and shops. Both parties remain mostly silent on the water problem,even as they fight for credit for better roads and the construction of flyovers.