India, May 26 -- Over the last few years, political shifts under pressure or for profit, the practice of calling each other black instead of presenting themselves as clean, and the use of money, power, and state machinery to win elections, rather than introducing and implementing any systemic policy to address the state's issues, have become rampant among political parties in Punjab. Election after election, populist promises have been made. Since Independence, the Congress and the SAD alternated in power until 2022, after which the AAP took control; meanwhile, the BJP remains impatient to take the reins of the state in the future.

The Congress and the SAD have long offered freebies, a practice to which the AAP has added, instead of crea...