Elections in Punjab: Time of the downtrodden?
Abhay Singh Jagat
Elections are coming, and with them comes a call to the most primal of human wants—power. The incumbents fear losing it, the challengers lust for it. There are, of course, different shades of grey to the desires which fuel this lust for power, all justified under various banners of ‘concerned citizens’, ‘keepers of the faith’, ‘saviours of the nation’, etc. Call me a cynic, but whatever the banner be, they are mostly hypocrites just waiting for their ‘moon-shot’ to land and then ride the gravy train for the next five years. This cynicism is born from having seen quite a few of these governments come and go (my hair is a shade of grey now). They are mostly ‘one trick magicians’ full of bluster and the crowd leaves them as soon as the ‘trick’ loses its charm. Some promise the earth, others the moon — all pandering to the unending desire of the masses to attain some form of fulfilment, which evades them just like the magician’s sleight of hand. However, not to worry — if not fulfilment, at least the elixir of the gods will be temporarily available, promising nirvana today and a hangover tomorrow.
On a more serious note, why can’t we get them to at least debate on certain issues pertaining to our present and future which, if dealt with prudently, could contribute to that ‘promised land’. Like ‘Don Quixote’, I will charge the windmills with the hope that the monster is nudged if not slain — so, bear with me. Being Punjabi, the desire to travel is ingrained in the subconscious, which brings me to our famed ‘Chandigarh International Airport’. It was supposed to teleport us to different corners of the planet but has instead become more like a mirage on a never-ending Saharan desert.
One should think that landlocked Punjab, which claims to have one of the largest international diasporas in the country, would surely have an active international airport, right? Till date, various governments have come and gone but Chandigarh the capital city can boast of only a single international flight to Sharjah which also, at best, is given to the vagaries of weather (if memory serves me right,we still don’t have CAT III, even though an honourable judge did try for long).
Amritsar is slightly better off with a couple of oddball connections which help you reach your destination in a meandering manner, perhaps better suited to the time of the Silk Route. Why this openly biased and negative policy against Chandigarh and Punjab? It would do wonders to the economy, trade and culture of a landlocked state to be fully enabled for international commute. What holds the powers that be from doing this simple act — perhaps they are jealous of our nomadic ways and prefer to keep us bottled. But fear not, our travel genie has a habit of escaping and the tribes have escaped to far-flung corners of the planet.
Evidently, the latest itch for travel and immigration for the Punjabi, as discovered by the Western countries, is education. Every year thousands of Punjabis are paying astronomical sums for getting an education abroad or in other states to satiate this thirst for knowledge. What stops the powers that be from establishing institutions of higher learning here? Be it the sciences, arts or skill and trade centres, we have to leave our homes to get a decent education. The financial and emotional cost on families parting with their children is huge. The state could prosper if this wealth of both educating a child and then losing him as an immigrant could be saved and retained within. Can’t we generate the funds (which seem to be aplenty when it comes to giving various doles and funding Ponzi schemes), for the talent is surely there.
We have always been known as an industrious people but somehow industry as evaded us. We were earlier told (as the greybeards will remind you) that Punjab being a border state, industry was neither encouraged nor developed as it was strategically unsound. Given that it has been at least five decades since this defunct military logic was put in the bin, why are we still at an abysmal level of industrial growth? We have an active agricultural base and an economy which is predominantly agrarian, so why hasn’t a natural progression been encouraged to graduate to the secondary and tertiary sectors? Food processing, yarn and textiles, leather, wood-processing — these industries should have emerged strongly by now. There are a few successful exceptions, but too few to mention and mostly dwindling as they shift to greener pastures.
Punjabis have done wonders with dairy and cheese industry in Italy, they manage vineyards in California and run huge, mechanised farms for almonds, apples, peaches etc. Again, I could go on about what the diaspora has achieved with better education and nurturing —the question remains, why not here?
If you travel to the UK, Australia or the USA, Punjabi GPs have been quite the norm in the medical profession. You will find the successful Punjabi doctor in most parts of the world, yet at home the lesser said the better — not due to lack of talent or ability, rather lack of infrastructure and reasonable provisions for health security of the population. The age-old saga of overloaded hospitals and lack of treatment is a dark story in the annals of our state. The PGI remains that unattainable beacon of hope for the masses as they struggle to find a ‘bed’. Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, after a deadly bout of Covid was quick to change course from being a baiter of the NHS to one of its most prolific advocates… The deluge of our local politicians seems to be immune to such finer sentiments.
While the first world debates critical issues such as climate change and candidates win and lose based on their ability to convince their electorate on these, we are oblivious to this entirely. Climate change and pollution — like Covid — are best not talked about and are considered alien concepts in the hinterland. After all, there really isn’t much industrialisation to talk of in the first place. However, the bus being missed is one of opportunity and early adaption. Companies, organisations, institutions, states which acknowledge this and move away from a fossil fuel-based economy to a more sustainable one will have the advantage as the world economy starts to attach costs to the old way of doing things. The bullet of climate change has long left the barrel and the resultant change in the global economic focus to a more sustainable economy is a given. We are currently nowhere on this page — not even on this chapter, or in this book. Ironically, Alok Sharma, the President of COP26 — the climate summit held in Glasgow — was born in Agra.
The above are but a few of the challenges which face us, they are questions which have been unanswered for long. I write them with the hope that others will pick up this baton and continue to charge the politicians, with the hope that something will move. The one-trick magicians in their latest avatars this season will try and mesmerise us into believing that our security, religion, country, caste, tribe are under threat, and that they have the ultimate solution. They will talk about everything that can and somehow divide and divert us into cattle pens of their making — for that is what we are to them: cattle and sheep to be herded for milking and harvesting. They will let lose their big, bad dogs to herd us and blow their dog whistles to muster the faithful. But sometimes the best laid plans fail and the time of the downtrodden comes. In the meantime, the U2 song ‘With or without you’:
‘Sleight of hand and twist of fate
On a bed of nails, she makes me wait…
With or without you…
Nothing to win and nothing left to lose…
With or without you…
