Nepali Times

The unexpected surge in India’s ongoing elections of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Punjab was an outcome of the disconnect between the politics of elite and reality at the grassroots. The AAP, as a citizen’s party with anti-corruption agenda, filled the vacuum and became the state’s Third Front.

Punjab suffered years of militancy. Today, the youth in Punjab has given up the gun for the heroin syringe. Smack, ice, opium has turned Punjab into a dope-heads and mainliners. A 2011 survey by the Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment concluded that 40 per cent of those in the age group of 15-25 years in the state are addicts, as are 48 per cent of farmers and agricultural labour.

Misery is sweeping the land of plenty, and the AAP turned that into a catchy slogan: “Na bhukki ko, na daaru ko, vote denge jhaddu ko.” (Bhukki is the local name for opium husk.) AAP became the beacon of hope because people knew the existing political class wouldn’t stem the supply of narcotics, says former police officer Shashi Kant. In 2007, Kant submitted a list of powerful politicians, police officers, even NGOs entangled in narcotics to Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal. No action was taken.

The AAP’s astonishing performance in the Delhi Assembly election last year stirred people fed up with this deliberate inaction. What also inspired its people is the AAP government’s crackdown on corruption and its decision to institute the SIT probe in the anti-Sikh riots of 1984. For those accustomed to the betrayal of the political class, AAP appeared a party willing to walk the talk.

“The state is on the path of revolution,” says Kant. “The party had no structure here. It was erected overnight on the shoulders of young men.” Jitender Singh Bitta, an Amritsar-based journalist, distilled the AAP effect into a line: “Kejriwal has shown to the people that anything can be done, and everything is possible.”

Does that include the eradication of narcotics from Punjab? Absolutely not, for substance abuse is also the symbol of Punjab’s falling agriculture yield, rampant corruption, the collapse of the government education and healthcare systems, and, beyond anything else, the crippling of the robust, optimistic Punjabi spirit, celebrated over the decades.

Social scientists differ over the precise provenance of drug abuse. On one aspect, though, they all agree – consumption of narcotics was a tradition in the state, and considered respectable. For the rich, opium was the preferred indulgence, or the poor, it was poppy husk, crushed and mingled with tea.

As the Green Revolution turned the state remarkably prosperous in the 70s, drug cartels pushed the contraband through routes used for smuggling gold. Narcotics became an important mode for financing militancy. Militancy was rooted out, but not the smuggling of drugs, over which the politicians and the police, granted extraordinary powers to fight terrorism, gained control.

Harish Puri, who retired as professor from Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, says while the Green Revolution enhanced the prosperity of the landlords, the lower castes working as tenant farmers didn’t get their appropriate share in the rising profits from agriculture. At the height of terrorism, Puri conducted a study of 28 villages, and found the level of education among them abysmal. Drugs and guns became their tools to overcome their deplorable condition, more so as they were virtually unemployable in other sectors.

Ironically, the 70s and 80s saw the ‘lower’ castes flock to village schools prompting those up the social ladder to move out because they considered it below their dignity to mingle with them. Schools were then deprived of resources and this lead to the collapse of the education system.

Over the next two decades, the diminishing returns from the Green Revolution, too, set in. The agricultural growth rate in Punjab slowed down from 5 per cent in the 80s to 1.9 per cent in the 2000s. It saw the rich farmers turn away from agriculture and sell their land. Nevertheless, the neo-rich indulge in substance abuse because they have enormous surplus cash in hand, the poor farmers because it makes the circle of hopelessness in which they are trapped tolerable. Says Puri: “In Punjab, one section of the youth is waiting for visas, the other for their next fix.”

People reacted to their experiences and gravitated towards AAP, as both the Congress and the Akali Dal-BJP were held responsible for the state’s woes. Even in the land of addicts, it is difficult to squash hope.

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