India, July 13 -- The 2027 election should be fought over jobs, water, drugs and fiscal repair-not by turning Punjab's unresolved traumas into campaign material. Punjab is still months away from the assembly election, but the campaign has begun. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) will seek a second term. The Congress and the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) are trying to recover ground they once considered their own. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which leads the Union government, and most of the states, wants Punjab to believe that access to New Delhi can succeed where successive state governments have failed. That is legitimate democratic competition. What is not legitimate is the temptation, and emotional upsurge, visible once again, to make Punjab's most painful memories do electoral work. The controversy over Satluj, a movie based on the life of human-rights defender Jaswant Singh Khalra, has revived questions of censorship, disappearances and state excesses during the years of militancy. Akal Takht's summons to Sikh ministers and legislators over Punjab's anti-sacrilege law has placed the relationship between religious authority and constitutional lawmaking under unusual public scrutiny. Amritpal Singh's political rise continues to be interpreted through sharply opposed narratives. Together, these developments have returned identity, injury and historical grievance to the centre of political conversation. Punjab must discuss its past. The victims of terrorism, the families of those who disappeared, the sufferers of state terrorism and those still waiting for justice cannot be asked to forget. The sacrilege of Guru Granth Sahib is not a small issue. It is a profound wound, aggravated by delayed investigations, failed prosecutions and political evasion. But remembrance is not the same as political recruitment. Punjab has already paid an unbearable price for the use of religion, factional rivalry and provocative personalities as instruments of politics. The precise responsibilities for the breakdown of the late 1970s and early 1980s remain debated. Yet, serious scholarship has documented how factionalism in the Congress involving Giani Zail Singh and Darbara Singh, and attempts to outmanoeuvre the Akali Dal, contributed to a climate in which forces initially treated as manageable acquired constituencies and power of their own. What followed was not a clever electoral adjustment. Punjab witnessed Operation Bluestar, the 1984 riots post assassination of Indira Gandhi, Operation Black Thunder I and II, militancy, counter-insurgency, political assassinations, communal killings and a generation marked by fear. That history does not prove today's allegations. Claims that the AAP or the BJP "launched" Amritpal Singh, engineered the Satluj controversy or deliberately revived sacrilege politics have not been established by publicly available evidence. They should not be repeated as fact. But the absence of proof does not make the political danger imaginary. Governments can enlarge fringe personalities through clumsy overreaction. The parties can legitimise them through tactical accommodation. Electronic and social media can turn every confrontation into political theatre. Punjab knows how quickly such theatre can escape its producers. The appearance of Sikh legislators before Akal Takht also requires maturity rather than competitive rhetoric. Akal Takht occupies a singular position in Sikh history, and consultation with Sikh institutions on legislation concerning Guru Granth Sahib is natural and necessary. Yet, legislators derive their authority from the Constitution and represent citizens of every faith. Religious counsel deserves respect; legislative responsibility cannot be outsourced. The dignity of both institutions depends upon keeping that boundary clear. The anti-sacrilege law has become controversial not because anyone defends sacrilege, but because questions remain about its drafting, consultation, religious autonomy, constitutional sustainability and possible misuse. Punjab needs a law that is effective, fair and legally durable-not one framed under electoral pressure or religious competition. Meanwhile, the Punjab that most citizens inhabit is scarcely visible in this argument. Official labour-force data placed unemployment among Punjabis aged 15 to 29 at 19.3% during October-December 2025, against an all-India rate of 14.3%. Among young women in Punjab, the rate was 28.4%. For many young Punjabis, migration is no longer merely an aspiration. It is an escape from the absence of credible opportunities at home. The water crisis is even less negotiable. Punjab's groundwater extraction has crossed 150% of its annually extractable resource, and more than a hundred assessed blocks are already categorised as over-exploited. The state is not merely using groundwater at this rate. It is mining its future. Yet, agricultural politics remains trapped in a narrow cycle of free power, procurement dependence and periodic relief. No party has produced a credible transition plan that protects farm incomes while moving Punjab towards crop diversification, water discipline, agro-processing and assured markets. The state's fiscal position further restricts every government's room for manoeuvre. Punjab's fiscal deficit remains above prudent levels, while outstanding liabilities are estimated at nearly half of the state's economic output. Successive governments have preferred politically attractive expenditure over difficult structural reform. The drug emergency also persists. Arrest figures and seizures may demonstrate administrative activity, but they do not by themselves establish success. A durable response requires intelligence-led action against major traffickers, credible prosecution, prevention in schools and communities, accessible treatment, long-term rehabilitation and employment for vulnerable young people. These are the issues on which Punjab's political parties should be compelled to compete. The party in power must defend its record through measurable outcomes, not merely announcements or comparisons with previous regimes. It came to power promising badlav (change). It must now show whether that change has improved schools, hospitals, policing, employment, investment and the quality of public administration. The Congress must offer more than nostalgia, inherited organisation and factional leadership. It must confront its own record and explain what it would do differently if returned to power. The Shiromani Akali Dal must rebuild moral, political and institutional credibility. It cannot simply invoke its Panthic inheritance while avoiding difficult questions about governance, sacrilege and the erosion of public trust. The BJP must present a Punjab-specific programme on federalism, agriculture, river waters, Chandigarh, industry, border security and minority confidence. Being the largest ruling party in the country is not, by itself, a policy for Punjab. Punjab needs an election compact built around five tests: Jobs that do not require migration; farm diversification backed by markets and income protection; enforceable groundwater management; a public-health-led assault on addiction; and fiscal repair that protects productive investment. It also needs a cross-party pledge that no political formation will cultivate extremism, communal suspicion or religious authority for temporary electoral advantage. Punjab's wounds deserve truth, justice and remembrance. They must never become campaign property. The choice before voters is clear: Build and protect the future, or keep voting on the past. The voter looking for work, the farmer watching a tubewell sink deeper, the mother seeking treatment for an addicted child and the small entrepreneur waiting for a predictable government are not asking politicians to refight the battles of the 1980s. They are asking for a future that answers their daily needs....