Tale of an adventure

Julio Ribeiro

The Modi-Shah dispensation, ruling at the Centre, is presently hunting for prominent Sikh faces for their party. It appears that my former junior colleague in the IPS cadre of Maharashtra, Sarbdeep Singh Virk, was on the lookout for an opening in the political space where a measure of renewed prominence was assured. The twain met! So it did not surprise me to read his name in the pages of an English daily of Mumbai on December 4, as one of the ruling party’s scalps!

The poll scene in Punjab is confusing. Even a seasoned political pundit will hesitate to make a prediction. This time, the farmers are holding their cards close to their chest.

I have known Sarbdeep from the first day he and Parvinder Singh Pasricha reported for duty in the IGP’s office in Mumbai. They were the only two probationers allotted to Maharashtra that year, and it so happened that they both hailed from Punjab and both were Sikhs.

Parvinder went on to specialise in traffic management. He spent most of his working life in Mumbai and more than half of that time he was involved in the smooth flow of traffic through the city’s three main arterial roads. He did it so well that people ‘promoted’ him to ‘Commissioner Traffic’, three steps up from the Deputy Commissioner (equivalent to SP in the district) rank he then held. Whenever he was shifted out of the city to learn grassroots policing, successive governments would bring him back to his first and only love.

Sarbdeep, on the other hand, established himself as a good leader of men. In Pune, where he was posted as a DCP, he made quite a difference! Our paths crossed many years later in Punjab, when I headed the Punjab Police for two years in 1986. He was SP, Amritsar, easily the most important district in the state, when I took over the reins of the force in Chandigarh.

Since I knew him from his years in Maharashtra, it was but natural that his briefings about the terrorist problem were valued by me. A cautionary note was struck by the CM, Surjit Singh Barnala, who told me that he was a distant relative, but all that he conveyed to me needed to be cross-checked. Though the CM was a politician, there was an innate goodness in him that one could discern. I always felt that the goodness emanated from his strong religious beliefs.

I cannot say who will gain from the marriage of convenience between my young friend (he was comparatively young when I last met him at a hospital in Mumbai where he was undergoing a major surgery) and the most powerful party that now straddles the political stage in India. The BJP works to a plan. The induction of Sarbdeep and other Sikhs into the party is part of the plan. Will both gain or just one of the two, and, in that case, which one?

The electoral scene in Punjab is presently very confusing. The Congress, which had an edge a few months ago, is struggling because of the antics of its own party president, who insists on blowing hot and cold and keeping his party’s CM on perpetual edge. Sarbdeep used to be helped by the Congress whenever he was in need of a push, like when he wanted a deputation to Punjab, or later to the CRPF so that he could stay on in Punjab, or when he thought he should be honoured with Padma Shri, or when he needed to be repatriated to his parent cadre of Maharashtra to avoid the wrath of the Akali Dal and its CM, Parkash Singh Badal.

That last mentioned time was close! The state he had shunned for greener pastures received him with open arms because of the then PM Manmohan Singh’s intervention. He even got a shot at the state police’s top job before he retired. I would have thought that out of pure gratitude he would have gravitated to the Congress, if a political career was what he craved. Obviously, he had calculated differently. The BJP could install him as Lt Governor, just like it did Kiran Bedi, after she lost the Delhi elections.

My friend Sarbdeep is an ambitious man. And he usually succeeds in getting what he wants! My own philosophy is tangentially different from his. I believe that if you do not want to be stung you must abjure ambition. Then nothing can sting you. Nothing can make you morose and unhappy!

Sarbdeep’s progress in his new avatar of a political leader will depend now on the whims of the electorate. Who will the people favour? At present one cannot tell. The farmer’s vote is eagerly anticipated. Which way will it go? To the Congress? To the AAP which has made solid inroads into the state in the past few years? To the new party of Capt Amarinder Singh who does not appear to have got off the block as yet? Only if the Captain starts running will he be able to judge whether he can make up ground. He is probably waiting for the disgruntled who have not been favoured with tickets. That, in my unschooled view, would be too late. He should start fishing now, like the BJP has been doing and Mamata is now doing in Tripura and Goa. If he delays, any future Punjab Lok Congress-BJP government will assign to him a junior role, like the Shiv-Sena was assigned in Maharashtra after it won fewer seats than the BJP.

I would have thought that the Akali Dal would start climbing out of the pit in which it had fallen after the stink over drug proliferation started evaporating. Or does the charge still linger in people’s mind? Farmers who constituted its support base seem to have abandoned the party, even though the Akalis have exited the NDA. The farmers are yet to decide their electoral preference, but it looks as if the Akali Dal may not be the preferred choice.

The scenario is confusing. Even a seasoned political pundit will hesitate to make a prediction. The farmers are holding their cards close to their chest. Till they decide, all the adventurous souls, like my friend Sarbdeep, will have to keep their fingers crossed. Sarbdeep has many contacts amongst the farmers also, but this time individual farmers may not venture to puncture the unity they as a body have achieved as a result of their year-long agitation. BJP bigwigs had hurled unkind, in fact, false invectives against them during the standoff. It may be too soon to forget. Worse, it may not be possible for the BJP’s propaganda machine to deny that their leader had even uttered such falsehoods!

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