Punjabi antenna
What Baisakhi means to Punjab
Randeep Wadehra

All that is predictable is not necessarily trivial but could be special like Baisakhi, the annual festival that symbolises so many aspects – spiritual, temporal as well as unpalatable – of Punjab’s life. This is the day associated with the Khalsa Panth’s birth – an event that rejuvenated an entire community and charged it with an abiding martial spirit. This is also the day related with the harvesting of crops, which invariably triggers celebratory propensities among Punjabi farmers.

Again, this is the day associated with the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre – an event that hastened the eventual demise of the British Raj. Unfortunately, another predictable event has been added – political rallies. "Unfortunately" because, after ritualistically eulogising the momentous events associated with the day and paying homage to the martyrs, our politicians begin to indulge in the game they are really good at – mudslinging; a game one watches on the TV with a mixture of alarm and disgust.

Baisakhi triggers celebratory propensities among Punjabi farmers A Tribune photo

This year has been no different. Last fortnight the small screen was lit up (if you had watched CNN’s live coverage of the first massive raid of Iraq by George Bush Senior’s US military, a.k.a. the Gulf War of 1991, you will readily connect with what I am trying to convey) with the verbal sallies launched by various politicians against each other.

But predictability is not associated with political rallies alone. In the genre of political shenanigans one must also include the academic world wherein the controversy related to granting deemed university status to Amritsar’s Khalsa College has been predictably reduced to SAD versus INC skirmishes.

Again, predictably, the aftermath of 2011 census revelations has stirred up the region’s chattering classes like a swarm of busy-bees. We had Punjab’s health minister on Masle telling the viewers how several private clinics in the state are still facilitating female foeticide. She also said that it was the educated and well-off stratum of the Punjabi population that was indulging in this heinous crime. The poor and uneducated, who cannot afford the private clinics’ services, have to make do with female infanticide – the cruder method of doing away with daughters. So what is the solution? None of the panellists could suggest an effective one`85 predictably.

Also predictable was the Punjabi electronic media’s reaction to the Anna Hazare phenomenon. Zee Punjabi’s Khabarsaar seemed pretty taken up with the possibility of our civil society "supplanting" the democratic institutions. They all beat around the bush, occasionally hitting it directly but certain issues remained unresolved / unmentioned. For example, is our civil society really strong enough to, let alone supplant, even nudge the powers that be to do the right thing? Already political intrigue and dirty tricks have got into the act – predictably! Moreover, just making of the law is not enough; we are presuming, of course, that the August 15 deadline would be kept. Our democratic institutions need quite a bit of sprucing up if not a thorough overhaul. The democratic culture has yet to be truly a part of our collective psyche. This would put steel in the nation’s resolve to do away with all forms of corruption.

Then there was this personage on Day & Night News channel’s Fair & Square expressing his schmaltzy gratefulness to the parent-son party bosses. No, no, this personage is not a Congress acolyte, but SGPC chief Avtar Singh Makkar, who did take care to express his gratitude first to the Gurus and then to Parkash Singh Badal, explaining that if the Akali Dal (read the Badal patriarch) had not nominated him as candidate, he would not have become the SGPC president. All politicians are equally predictable – after all, what used to be understood as the "Congress culture" is now fully political culture, on the way to becoming our national culture. Predictable roadmap? You said it!