Editorial: Behind the SAD break-up of BJP’s oldest ally

It comes at a time when the BJP finds itself already under pressure from the Congress and other Opposition parties for having pushed through the farm Bills, which have created a fair measure of unrest in some parts of the country. In explaining its decision to pull out, the SAD has claimed its views on the Bills were simply brushed aside with the BJP paying no heed to its suggestions, which included addressing the reservations among farmers and referring them to a select committee.

As always, at the heart of such calculations, however, lie larger political considerations. At the immediate level, the Akalis could not but have been struck by the popular discontentment among the farmers in Punjab, which its rival, the Congress, has effectively mobilised. The SAD is a party that relies heavily on the Punjab peasantry, and it is this constituency that it fears losing in the battle of public perceptions over the new farm legislations. At the same time, the 2022 election is looming and although the party won two successive Assembly polls, its performance in the 2017 polls – where it won a mere 15 out of 117 seats – is a source of worry.

What remains to be seen is how the Akalis will reinvent themselves going forward. It has tried over the years to morph from being a Sikh Panthic party, founded on anti-Congressism, into one that stands for development. The problem, of course, is that there are other players in this space, the latest being the Aam Aadmi Party, which won a striking four Lok Sabha seats in the State in 2014, but slumped in 2019 with a heavily reduced vote share and only one seat.

As for the BJP, the state unit has been clamouring for a larger role. The terms of the arrangement between the two parties have been very much in favour of the SAD. The BJP presence, of course, is limited largely to urban pockets in a largely agrarian State; its challenge is to break into the peasantry, which was never going to be easy, and especially so now given the circumstances.

One of the issues is that the farm legislations play out differently in Punjab than they do in other States. The APMC markets are a big presence here (as well as in Haryana, the other hotspot) unlike other States, where they are so far-flung that it is not viable for small farmers to reach their produce to these mandis. Not so in Punjab where the marketable surplus is huge and significant amounts is sold through the APMCs and procured by government agencies.

The Centre has advanced Kharif paddy procurement by a few days in Punjab and Haryana to douse the protests, but it is not clear whether this is enough to appease farmers. With the Shiv Sena and the SAD out of the fold, the BJP has lost two critical regional allies, which raises the question over the compatibility of its nationalist vision with local and regional aspirations.