For someone who joined politics only 10 years ago, Harsimrat Kaur Badal’s rise has been quite meteoric as she takes charge of the food processing portfolio for the second time. She is one of the only three women in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet.
Much of the credit should go to her family – she is the bahu of former Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal, biwi of former Punjab deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal, beti of Satyajit Majithia, chairman of the Saraya Group, which is in the business of sugar and liquor, and behen of controversial former Punjab minister Bikram Singh Majithia.
The Majithias trace their lineage to one of the generals of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Harsimrat’s great grandfather was one of the founders of Chief Khalsa Diwan Charitable Society, Khalsa College in Amritsar, and Punjab and Sind National Bank, while her grandfather was a three-time MP. She is also one of the richest MPs in the Lok Sabha with assets worth over Rs 40 crore.
Guardian of Sikh pride
But Harsimrat is more than the sum of her surnames. As she showed in her powerful speech in the Lok Sabha in 2009, she can be impassioned about the status of victims of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots and also get enraged by cartoons lampooning politicians in school textbook.
In particular, she has set herself up as a guardian of Sikh pride, trying hard not to alienate the conventional voter – she always wears salwar kameez and covers her head with a dupatta. The story goes that when former prime minister Manmohan Singh invited her to meet former US president Barack Obama in 2010, she wore a silk sari, which caused Harsimrat’s fans to rant about her having betrayed her Punjabi heritage.
For Harsimrat, tradition is everything. “The benchmark of my politics is that my father-in-law should not be ashamed of me. People should not say Badal sahib ki daughter-in-law and shake their heads,” she had said during an interview with India Today. Not surprisingly, back home in her constituency Bathinda, she is known as Biba (the good girl). Let’s just call her the 4B (Bahu, Biwi, Beti and Behen) Biba.
Yet, Harsimrat was brought up in the liberal environment of Delhi, going to Loreto School and then studying textile design at South Delhi Polytechnic for Women. When she was married to Sukhbir Singh Badal in 1991, the understanding was that he would not enter politics. Within two years of their marriage, he promptly did so. Harsimrat laughs at this now. “I remember saying to myself: ‘You idiot. You married a politician’s son. What else did you think would happen?’ she said in an interview to India Today.
Also read: Modi sticks with Harsimrat Kaur Badal, picks her over husband Sukhbir
Political plunge & success
Having raised three children in relative anonymity as a mostly single mother, while her husband hurled himself into full-time politics, she was persuaded by her family to stand as the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) candidate from Bathinda when challenged to name a family member by current chief minister Amarinder Singh. She defeated his son, Raninder Singh, and then won again in 2014. This year, she had a tough contest against two-time Congress MLA Amrinder Singh Raja Warring and Punjab Ekta Party chief Sukhpal Singh Khaira.
Clearly, the people of Bathinda know what’s good for them. In the last 10 years, according to India Today, she has transformed what was once “the dusty ‘back of beyond’, among Punjab’s backward areas, and shunned as a “punishment posting”. Bathinda, it said in 2014, “is suddenly peeking at new possibilities with multiplexes and a maze of flyovers and underbridges”. The constituency has a 200-bed Max Super Speciality Hospital, set up in 2011, a public RO system for filtered drinking water in all 652 villages, a Guru Gobind Singh Refinery set up by HPCL-Mittal Energy Limited (HMEL) at Phulokhari village, and a Vedanta thermal power plant at Banawala village.
A member of what NewsX anchor Priya Sahgal calls the Daughters and Wives (DAWs) club in Parliament (which includes her friends NCP’s Supriya Sule and DMK’s Kanimozhi), Harsimrat has nevertheless made women’s issues her particular cause. Says Sahgal, the author of The Contenders: Who Will Lead India Tomorrow, where she has profiled Harsimrat as well, calling her ‘The Firebrand from Punjab’: “It was she who convinced her father-in-law to recruit women in the Punjab police force, and again persuaded her husband to organise kabaddi matches for women as well as men, and argued against the disparity in prize money, Rs 2 crore for men and Rs 50,000 for women.”
She had some perks as the ‘First Daughter-in-Law’ too. Snarky commentators point to the April 2013 issue of the state information department magazine, Advance, which put her on the cover, with an accompanying article written by then state media adviser, Harcharan Singh Bains, describing her as “fragile yet focused” and “Princess Diana and Mother Teresa’s spirit reborn as one”.
Politics is personal
Her politics is personal, rather than ideological. Her strong sentiments on the 1984 riots stem from her own experience of hiding in the family’s servant quarters as a young college girl along with her two brothers and then 85-year-old grandfather. Her anger against textbooks comes from what her children had to study.
She is feisty and outspoken, which is quite a contrast to her taciturn husband, who will be joining her in the Lok Sabha this time, having won from Firozpur.
They may no longer have the state at their beck and call as they did when “Daddy” was in power, but they will certainly be the Capital’s power couple to watch. And with their penchant of throwing big parties for friends and media, offering the best cuisine from their state and a round or two of gidda (a traditional Punjabi dance which she loves as seen here), they will no doubt be on top of the popularity charts.
Harsimrat will have to show the same skills of making friends and influencing people when it comes to her passion project – making the lives of Indian farmers better.
Also read: Why is Harsimrat Kaur Badal so angry?
She has started the annual World Food India event, a success in terms of grabbing eyeballs as well as investment proposals. She has also established a NABARD fund and got food processing units classified as an agricultural lending under the priority sector. Some of the other key initiatives of the food processing ministry include the Operation Greens scheme to fix prices of tomatoes, onions and potatoes, getting 17 Mega Food Parks operational and fast-tracking approvals for cold chains.
She has spoken at length on how India is the second largest producer of fruits and vegetables in the world, yet only 3 per cent of it is processed, and as much as 18 per cent of it is wasted. In 2016, she managed to get 100 per cent FDI in trading of food products manufactured and produced in the country, which the Swadeshi Jagran Manch is bitterly opposed to.
But she considers it her biggest achievement, pointing out how it will boost employment, cut wastage and control food inflation.
In 2012, she said: “My father-in-law rarely speaks, my husband is conservative, and I can’t stop talking”.
She will have to do more than that now. But given the diplomatic skills she has displayed, keeping her cool when the Maharashtra government decided to appropriate the right to appoint the president of the managing committee of Takht Hazur Sahib and when negotiations over the Lok Sabha seats between the BJP and her party became intense, she should be fine.
The author is a senior journalist. Views are personal.
Typical puff piece!! Pure fluff….writer and minister were gym mates?
When I was studying in Nainital in the 1960’s I remember the Majithia family. They were regal if not royal members of the Boathouse Club, and had their own yacht.
If she can improve the food chain from farm to fork as it is called, push for more cold storages for perishable fruit and vegetables, and give a fillip to the food processing industry she will indeed be doing a great service to the country.
However, I found a little dichotomy in the portrayal of her as a feisty woman, but one who always covers her head, which I personally see as a sign of women’s servility in all major religions.
No member of the Badal family represents either Sikhs or Sikh Pride. They are the biggest traitors of the Sikh community.