Punjab’s rewritten history has a leaf out of Nitish book

“Instead of touching the panthic agenda,the Akalis raised issues related to development and governance. The Congress should have gone high in countering that. It failed to do so,” says Dr Pramod Kumar,director,Institute of Development and Communication.

Dr Kumar,who also headed the Punjab Governance Reforms Commission set up by the SAD-BJP government,lists out key moves that helped the Akalis regain power. “They did good social engineering by giving tickets to 11 Hindu candidates. A large section of Dalits voted from Akalis because of the atta-dal and shagun schemes,” he says. For the record,21 of the 56 seats the SAD won were reserved seats.

“With the anti-incumbency against the UPA government at the Centre… in in urban areas,the BJP gained. Also,corruption did not become an issue and most of the corruption charges could not be verified. The Akalis were also able to show evidence to people that they were introducing governance reforms with services like Right to Service Act,fard kendras,etc,” Dr Kumar says.

Prof Ashutosh Kumar of Panjab University’s political science department said it is a victory of mass politics over elite politics. “While the elite kept talking about the state’s debt and financial troubles,the Akalis went ahead and used a major portion of their resources for public-oriented welfare schemes without worrying too much about where the money would come from. In the last one-and-a-half years,the Akalis used the treasury to fund their populist schemes. That appears to have paid off,” he said.

“The Congress,on the other hand,was banking too much on history and was plagued with a sense of overconfidence. A delayed start to campaigning signalled that. Also,Sukhbir’s tactics to widen the SAD’s support base in urban areas worked. Nitish Kumar’s return to power in Bihar gave him hope.”

Manpreet Badal’s People’s Party of Punjab (PPP) may not have won a single seat but still managed to get 5.17 percent of the votes. “…You need to have a party and a cadre. Manpreet’s leaving the party,and its timing,actually helped Sukhbir,” Prof Ashutosh says.