A test for the Badals

There is hardly any doubt that the upcoming election (on February 20) in Punjab is going to make or break the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), and, with it, the fortunes of the Badal family, especially former deputy chief minister Sukhbir Badal. The farmers’ agitation cost the party its position at the high table: It had to quit the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and bid adieu to its oldest alliance partner, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Today, members of a party that has never reached double digits in the Assembly (in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, despite a Modi wave in the country, the BJP got only two seats in Punjab, even the Aam Aadmi Party got more), are making so bold as to rubbish the oldest party the state has known.

In 1920, when Punjab was an undivided province, to safeguard the rights and interests of the Sikhs, Master Tara Singh founded the Shiromani Akali Dal, which based itself on the Sikh panth (community) and religious tenets. Although religion and politics derived legitimacy from each other, at various times in history they also fought for ascendency. Parkash Singh Badal joined the Akali Dal, which was united in its burning desire to drive out the British. But after they left and the horrors of Partition visited the division of Punjab, the Akali Dal was riven by the absence of an “other” and ran itself into the ground by dividing into squabbling factions. Whose writ should run: The Sikh clergy or the political front of the party? This became the big issue in Punjab politics.

As both the communist parties and the Congress had strong roots in Punjab, the SAD was naturally bitterly opposed to both. But the communist movement petered out and gradually the Congress hit upon the strategy of dabbling in the differences within the Akali Dal to deepen the divisions. The rivalry between the Badal and Tohra groups and later others, led to the events in the Golden Temple, the assassination of Indira Gandhi, and decades of war between Punjab and the rest of India. Over the years, Parkash Singh Badal craftily managed to uphold the authority of the Akali Dal and weaken the hold of the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee over politics.

With this history and the antipathy between the SAD and the Congress, the BJP became a natural ally though there were moments of strain. The SAD-BJP alliance was put on trial during the 2008 trust vote sought by the Manmohan Singh government in Parliament over the Indo-US nuclear deal. While many party leaders faced the dilemma of voting against India’s first Sikh Prime Minister, Badal Senior stood unwavering in friendship with the BJP. Sukhbir said the Akalis were not against the nuclear deal (how could they be? remember all those non-resident Sikhs in the US?). In the run-up to the Gujarat elections, it was Badal Senior’s kitted-out “rath” that Narendra Modi borrowed and used before he got someone to design his own.

When the question of succession came up, his son Sukhbir took on the family business. That was in 2009. As the go-to man in successive SAD governments, Sukhbir steered the state through many economic and administrative reforms. The younger Badal was responsible for a new strategy of industrial promotion and agricultural diversification, which took Punjab away from agriculture alone. In Punjab’s industrial policy document after he took over, was included a promise to make Punjab a power-surplus state. As many as nine new power plants were built. But the power-purchase agreements (PPAs) were costly and coal-based — locking the state into expensive power procurement. Despite unbundling and other reform, a discom can only do so much — it can’t provide at Rs 3 a unit the power it buys at Rs 7 a unit.

While their relationship with the BJP has unravelled, the very reforms the Badals tried to institute are being used against them. In July 2021, then chief minister Amarinder Singh asked the state power sector regulator to examine all PPAs signed by previous SAD-BJP governments with various private power plants, and revise or cancel the contracts “that are not beneficial to the state”. A few months later, in a white paper, Finance Minister Manpreet Badal implied corruption when he said previous governments had changed the terms of power plants from a build-operate-transfer (BOT) system to build-operate-own (BOO) mode, thus benefitting private players. It is another matter that it took the Amarinder Singh government five years to stumble on this.

As its political clout wanes, the family business too is taking a hit. How is the SAD going to retain its political and financial capital? The 2022 Assembly election in Punjab will put a party in government and another in the opposition. But this election will also decide in what shape and form the SAD will survive.