Farm unions in poll field, Punjab parties watch their roots
AS PUNJAB heads for a multi-cornered contest, where any small difference in vote share can make a big difference, one new entrant could upset many calculations. That is the Samyukta Samaj Morcha (SSM), the political front floated by 22 farm unions which had been part of the year-long protest against the Centre’s farm laws.
The face of the SSM is Balbir Singh Rajewal, who defying his age of 78 had emerged as one of the most prominent leaders of the agitation. The parties that had been hoping to cash in on the anger against the BJP over the farm laws are now watching warily even as the buzz is that Rajewal is in talks with the Aam Aadmi Party, the debutant of last time that had shaken up Punjab politics.
What is further fuelling the speculation is that the SSM is yet to register itself with the Election Commission, or identify candidates, given that it has said it wants to contest all the 117 seats.
Incidentally, in the 2017 Assembly elections, Rajewal had lent his support to AAP and is known to enjoy a good relationship with party convener Bhagwant Mann.
Last week, asked about AAP having already named its candidates for 101 seats, Rajewal said AAP had told him they would change the candidates if the SSM joined hands with it.
While AAP has chosen not to publicly comment on the matter, it will clearly gain from such a tie-up, says Prof Ashutosh Kumar of Panjab University. In the 2017
Assembly elections, AAP had won most of its seats from the Malwa region (accounting for 69 constituencies), which was the epicentre of the farm agitation.In what could complement this base, most of the SSM unions have influence over Doaba region (with 23 seats).
Besides, the entry of farmers in the poll race will hurt the Shiromani Akali Dal, whose core cadre comes from villages. In 2017, while SAD had polled more votes than AAP in the rural Panthic segments, it had finished behind the Congress. Party president Sukhbir Singh Badal often refers to SAD as a party of farmers.
The SSM could succeed in creating factions or, what are called, “dhadda” in villages. Says a senior Congress minister, “In villages, people align with a faction or dhadda which looks after them. It’s not a politics of ideology but factions.”
The Congress is hoping its Dalit trump card, in the form of Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi, will help it bridge the rural-urban or farmer-non-farmer divide. While caste is not as big a determining vote factor in Punjab than in some parts of the country, this could change given that Channi is only the first Dalit CM of Punjab despite the state’s large Scheduled Caste numbers.
This would also hurt AAP as it had won a large number of reserved seats in the last election.
Historically, parties arising out of farmer mobilisation have not succeeded at the hustings. The 1980-2014 farmers’ movement in Maharashtra, leading to the Shetkari Sanghatana, did not fare well in electoral politics.
The biggest hurdle for the SSM is that fellow members of the Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), which spearheaded the farm protests, have opposed it joining politics. SKM leaders like Darshan Pal have attacked Rajewal, pointing out his earlier dalliances with the Congress and Akali Dal apart from AAP.
On the ground, the villagers are divided. The refrain, especially in Malwa where members of the BKU (Ugrahan) – that opposes the SSM — are picketing offices of deputy commissioners, is that whoever manages to win the trust of farmers will get their vote.
J S Sekhon, an Amritsar-based political scientist, is confident this will happen. “People have lost faith in traditional parties, which are far removed from the real issues facing people… And the alternative comes from people who have posted the first major challenge to the Modi government.”
