When silence is not an option

Nirmal Sandhu
Senior journalist

Punjab Congress president Sunil Jakhar has questioned the Akali silence on the Modi government selling diesel at Rs 67 a litre while the oil import price is $69 a barrel. The UPA, on the other hand, imported oil at $104 a barrel but charged customers only Rs 41 a litre, he claims. Jakhar is one of the few sober, taint-free leaders in Punjab who argue with reason and facts. 

But this time he is not right. The Badals did raise the oil issue at their recent meeting with Prime Minister Modi after BJP chief Amit Shah went on a pep-up-ally mission ahead of the 2019 General Election. As expected, Modi paid no heed to what the Badals said. Nor is he expected to look at the long list of demands the Punjab Chief Minister has presented him. For Punjab BJP leaders, arguing with Modi or Shah on behalf of Punjab is unimaginable. 

Now the question is: what do you do when you are not taken seriously? Pretend like the Badals that all is well and thank the PM for the GST concession on langar which is different from what was asked for? Or break up and venture into unchartered territory like Chandrababu Naidu? Or adopt the Kejriwal way? Punjab Congressmen are unusually polite towards Modi and starkly different when picking a fight with, say, Sukhpal Singh Khaira, the two Bains brothers or even one of their own, Navjot Singh Sidhu. 

It is not hard to understand why the Akali Dal keeps itself busy on issues that do not lead to the door of the Prime Minister or the BJP president. No more any talk of Central discrimination against Punjab, or more powers for the states, or the SYL Canal, or linking the MSPs to inflation or a package for Punjab — the subjects around which Akali politics had revolved for so many years in the past before the no-nonsense Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duo appeared on the political horizon.

Today, Akalis are content to get indignant if some school book does not adequately cover Sikh history as they see it. They discover a serious threat to the sovereignty and integrity of the country in some vague remarks Leader of Opposition Sukhpal Khaira makes about "Referendum 2020" — few have any clue what it is about. But the political fight over the issue was relentless. 

Since the Akalis have decided not to take on an all-protective and helpful Chief Minister beyond a point, they turn to their other bugbears — Sidhu and the Bains brothers — whenever they feel bored being out of power. It is therefore again understandable if the Akali politics is limited to illegal sand mining and the less-than-the-promised Congress loan waiver about which they had done next to nothing when in power. 

The "disrupters" — Sidhu, Khaira and the Bains brothers — are frequently at the receiving end because they want to change things the way they are. Hence, they pose a serious threat to those the system benefits. Such beneficiaries are in the Congress, the Akali Dal and the BJP — and their hangers-on to a lesser degree —who at times all join hands to pounce on these outsiders, helped by a change-resistant majority in the government and partisan television channels. Small wonder their occasional slip-ups invite overreaction, which tends to, or is designed to, drown the larger message they intend to convey. 

While Sunil Jakhar has made a valid argument about the Centre not doing anything to help out farmers by lowering the diesel prices, his words would have carried greater conviction had his party's government in Punjab taken the lead in slashing the taxes on oil. While trying hard to look farmer-friendly, the Congress government has happily pocketed a hefty sum from oil as the tax levied on oil is ad valorem, that is, the higher the oil price, the greater the gain. 

Besides, the government hopes to garner Rs 200 crore more annually from all rural customers with a 2 per cent hike in the electricity duty. Customers pay heavily for free power to farmers, subsidised power to industry and corruption. After a Rs 16-crore scam in the purchase of meters, a Vidhan Sabha committee has found, according to a Hindi daily, that PSPCL paid the taxes of a private company supplying coal from Jharkhand and coal stocks were diverted and sold before loading in trains. 

Corruption is an issue the Congress government in Punjab is sworn not to touch because it would lead to action against political opponents which someone inordinately dumb may construe as "vendetta politics". Besides, you need a chief minister with clean hands to hold the broom and do a systemic clean-up. Apart from spending free time in the hills, doing cover-ups is a hobby Capt Amarinder Singh has developed in his second, and probably the last, term as Chief Minister. He does not want to leave behind "enemies" in politics who might try to disturb his peace of mind in the retirement days.

Understandably, when he took up with the Prime Minister the issue of the Rs 31,000-crore debt, he did not let out any stink of the scam Sunil Jakhar had once so vociferously talked about. A media report about their meeting gave details of the Rs 31,000-crore debt — Rs 12,000 crore is the principal and Rs 19,000 crore the interest. There was no hint of how grains worth Rs 12,000 crore disappeared. The RBI had mentioned this while asking banks to treat the amount as an NPA.

The CM probably forgot or chose to forget what a commission he had set up said on the issue. The government has appointed so many commissions on so many wrongdoings of the previous regimes that it must be hard for the 76-year-old CM to keep track of what each is doing. This one — the Punjab Governance Reforms and Ethics Commission headed by KR Lakhanpal — has asked for a probe into the Rs 31,000-crore cash credit limit gap and its settlement — something any letter-to-editor writer would have done. It does not require expertise in governance. The real question is: is anyone interested in the follow-up action now, barring may be the "disrupters"? 

If the 70 per cent acquittals in drug cases can go uninvestigated, if Akalis framing Congressmen in false cases can go unpunished, if the Special Task Force report on drugs can be cast away unread and if illegal sand mining can be carried on defiantly, who would bother why the state has been saddled with such a huge, unwanted loan?