Region that decides Punjab ponders change

The youth or mundeer, particularly in rural areas, are talking of unemployment, drugs and the excesses of strongmen of the ruling dispensation. Farmers young and old are talking of causes that drove many to suicide.

“Ours is a large village with 6,000 voters who have been voting for Badal saab,” says Sukhdev. “But these boys won’t let us sit in peace. It appears they will change the way the wind blows. Punjab will change completely,” he adds, watching a concrete road being laid.

Across Malwa, massive infrastructure is being set up: solar light poles here, new drains there. Sukhdev is unimpressed: “They did nothing for five years. They started just it two months ago.”

The government has doled out sops worth over Rs 2,000 crore in election year. While many voters acknowledge this, they have complaints too. Lovely Singh, 18, of Badal village says he has visited the Badals’ village home many times for a job, “I go and come back. I am poor. But if I vote for the ruling party again, it seems I will have to be like my father — a farm labourer. They want us to remain where we are. If we get good jobs, who would work in their houses and fields?”

Gurdeep Singh, 55, a farmer of Chakk village in Lambi, says farmers have been committing suicide because the government has not able to provide a solution to theircrisis, “In this part of Malwa, many cotton farmers were ruined because subsidised pesticide supplied by the government turned out to be spurious and could not control the white fly pest. But no one seems to care.”

Gurmeet Singh, 22, of Arniwala in Jalalabad, Sukhbir Singh Badal’s constituency, is upset he hasn’t got a job though he took training from an ITI. “Then they always say the youth are taking to drugs. What else do we do when we have nothing else?”

AAP, a newcomer, comes without such baggage in Punjab. Banking on anti-incumbency, it will still need, however, to counter the senior Badal’s continuing support base.

“Badal saab is not a bad man. Their managers are bad. Some members of his family have brought him a bad name,” says Angrez Singh of Kandukhera village in Muktsar.

The Congress is no longer being considered the only alternative in rural Malwa. “The two have a nexus,” says Kewal Singh, a shopkeeper in Maur Mandi, reflecting how Arvind Kejriwal made that allegation.

In urban areas, though, many reaffirm their faith in the “experienced” Congress while being “wary” of “inexperienced” AAP. “Amarinder Singh has done a lot for Punjab,” says Sukhdeep Singh of Kamla Nehru Colony in Bathinda. “We are solidly with Captain saab,” echoes Hagobind Singh in Amarinder’s Mehraz village in Rampura Phul.

Amarinder, Punjab PCC chief, acknowledges AAP inroads in five districts considered poor — Faridkot, Bathinda, Mansa, Sangrur and Barnala — but is otherwise dismissive. “Even in these districts they are not winning all. We are winning some,” he says.

Harcharan Singh Bains, national media adviser to the SAD CM, is equally dismissive. “They have a presence in just a few districts. Pulling crowds to rallies is no barometer for their popularity,” he says, but cautions, “But their presence is worrying. They make political capital out of communal issues and are not even apologetic about it. They can push Punjab back to the days of violence.”

Kejriwal, for his part, says it is not just about Malwa. “Not just Malwa, we will get a massive response across the state. I have always been saying we will win over 100 seats.”

Malwa is the scene of several key one-on-one contests. “We will win all the big fights,” Kejriwal says. “Amarinder will lose both his seats. Dr Balbir Singh will defeat him in Patiala and Jarnail Singh will defeat him and Parkash Singh Badal in Lambi. In Majitha, Himmat Singh Shergill will defeat B S Majithia.”