No labour, Punjabi youths sweat it out in fields

Aman Sood

Tribune News Service

Patiala, April 16

Gurpreet Singh (24) from Sanaur is busy in his father’s six-acre field helping him with a sickle to harvest the wheat crop.

Till early March, Gurpreet was hopeful of moving to Australia for greener pastures on a student visa, never to come back again. The abroad plans are now shelved.

Many other international students are struck abroad and many have been brought back home under difficult conditions. Gurpreet is happy to wait and help his father in the fields. “A majority of us left studies with the sole aim to move abroad,” he says.

Their dollar dreams delayed by a few years due to Covid-19, Punjabi youths are now busy helping their parents in fields and grain markets. With the world pandemic spreading and many countries sending back migrant workforce due to job cuts, Punjabi boys can now be seen doing farm labour.

“I have seen my son and two nephews in the fields for the first time. It is really encouraging, but I doubt if it would last long as they both were waiting for their admission letters from a Canadian College,” says Karanbir Singh Sandhu, a farmer from Raungla village. “Our generation worked hard in fields, but today, once the son in our families grows up, all he wants is to move abroad and we are dependent on migrants for all farm-related chores,” he said.

Punjab’s foreign dreams are an open secret, with thousands migrating every year and ‘outbound student mobility’ rising significantly. About 75 per cent of students who wish to move abroad every year are from agricultural families. Most of these families have relatives abroad and are happy to send their sons away. Migration to foreign countries has become a status symbol in some villages. The men simply move away to Canada as students or temporary workers in search of a better life.

Former head, Department of Economics, Punjabi University, Dr Gian Singh, who has done many studies on rural labour and international migration from Punjab, says barring Jat Sikh youths from well-off families, majority of others will try to save on the money and work in fields.

“However, this is a short-term change, and once the lockdown is over, our youths will continue with the exodus,” he states, adding the political system and generation of jobs was the key problem of the state.