The Sant Who Believes In Some Direct Action

Baba Seechewal now slams 

Pollution Control Board, says he 

will plug the polluting rivulet 

himself since govt doesn’t 

want to. Clearly, it’s a war cry

Sukhjit Kaur

JALANDHAR: At a time when Arundhati Roy is talking about Gandhians with Guns, Punjab is witnessing a clear revolt by a Sant who, tired of the unholy nexus of the powerful with the corporates, is not shy of calling the spade a bloody shovel. Further, he plans to do something about it and has served notice.

Green crusader and Punjab Pollution Control Board member, Baba Balbir Singh Seechewal, who commands a strong following of thousands of devotees, has been fighting to stop the flow of untreated waste into the Kala Sanghian drain by the district administration and pollution control authorities have done precious little except assure him repeatedly, set new deadlines and making a show of their respect for Baba Seechewal.

Now, Seechewal has made clear that he cares little for such shows of respect which mean little. Accompanied by panchayats and people from villages that have been suffering because of the polluted water, Seechewal landed at the site himself and announced that he will wait no more and his devotees will plug the rivulet themselves.

The drain that flows between Gazipur and Chamiara carries a massive 12.9 crore liters of untreated effluents from industry and municipal corporations at any given time. 

Seechewal minced no words in even slamming the Board of which he is a member, underlining that it is not always possible to co-op everyone with a conscience into the system and corrupt him suitably.

Seechewal said he and the villagers have persistently taken up the issue for two years, but authorities chose to put thousands of lives at risk. In the Malwa belt and in Rajasthan, natives drink this water for want of an alternative water  source.

“People living in the 80 and more villages along the banks of the drain, which courses Doaba and Malwa region and part of Rajasthan, have suffered increasing incidence of respiratory diseases, skin, kidney, hair disorders and cancer for over 15 years, but the government has failed to act against industrial units. Let the cities handle their effluents themselves. Villagers will not allow it to flow into their territory,” he said. “If they can’t treat the water they have no right to throw dirty water in a natural drain and it is clearly illegal,” Baba Seechewal said. 

Seechewal’s warnings earlier had brought matters to a head in February 2008 and he no more ready to rest with deadlines.

Earlier, March 31 was the deadline given by the officials to stop flow of a major chunk of untreated water in the drain, which was then extended to April 30 and later to May 31 but nothing has been done even though even June has come and gone.

Seechewal and his associates Baba Sukhwant Singh, Baba Daya Singh and other religious personalities put down the inaction to the government’s alleged covert understanding with the industry and the mineral water mafia.

Strangely, Deputy Commissioner Priyank Bharti claimed he was not aware of the matter, thus only proving the disconnect between the people and the authorities.

Stop Casting Stones

Editorial published in Punjab Today 
edition of July 3-9, 2010

Every Friday morning, young men and school boys who should be discussing whether or not to shave their moustaches to impress the girls get together for a ritual in Kashmir valley: throwing stones at the security forces. In the last few days, the ritual was matched by a counter ritual as CRPF and police chose to fire at the protesters. In 18 days, 11 have died, and Paradise has been turned into a valley of death.
The stone-pelting actually has support sites on Facebook and other social networking domains, among these being ‘Kaushar Haatyar—Kann’e Jang’ (Kashmiri weapon—stone pelting) and Anjuman e Himaayat e Sangbazaan e Kashmir (The Association of Supporters of
 Stone-pelters).
But the stone pelting has perhaps more socio-cultural layers than the rulers or the police are prepared to deal with, or even acknowledge. Perfectly reasonable youth have been taking up stone pelting every Friday as an almost cathartic experience. While it is possible that the ring leaders may be driven by strong anti-India sentiments, or may have links across the border, as Home Minister P Chidambaram is suggesting, substantial numbers have found in stone pelting their chance to resist.
The valley is these days not the best place for a young man to find his destiny. Even picture postcard perfect towns have often failed to contain the
rush of youthfulness.

Kashmir's young men throwing stones and the women coming out to wail are making a point. They are demanding space for expression of rebellion. That expression is finding an expression even in Punjab. In Kashmir, the youth are throwing stones. In Punjab, they are desperate for jobs and climbing up water tanks, threatening to jump. In Manipur, they are laying road blocks.
The answer lies in engagement. You often have to engage exactly when you are not on the same page.  Because you are not listening, they are gathering the stones. Listen to them, they have a tale to tell. It isn’t easy to skip cricket every Friday in Kashmir, just as it shouldn’t be a way of life to climb atop water tanks at the sight of an education minister in
Punjab.

Caste, Census & Avtar Singh Makkar

Nischay Pal

As India embarks on one of the world’s largest ever administrative exercises, the Census 2011, Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee president Avtar Singh Makkar has directed the Sikh community to abstain from mentioning caste in the Census survey.

Makkar, who made a feeble and completely fruitless attempt to request the media not to suffix his sub-caste ‘Makkar’ with his name after he became the SGPC president, clearly understands little about the notions of caste and how it works in India.

But Makkar has a valid point of view when he says that caste has no place in Sikhism and that Sikhism rejects the caste system. He has been quoted as saying that if Sikhs mention their caste for government records, “they would be violating the basic tenets of their religion.”

They may, or they may not be doing any such thing, but what is clear is that Makkar understands little about Sikhism and much less about what Census 2011 would entail. As head of the SGPC, the body that has a hugely influential voice in not just the affairs of the community but also as a representative voice emerging from Punjab, it is expected of Avtar Singh Makkar and other Akali leaders that they make some basic inquiries before taking such a simplistic stand that Sikhism is against caste, so Sikhs must not mention their caste to the Census officials.

If only Makkar had looked back and focussed on the decades when he happily issued statements on letterheads that pronounced his name as “Makkar”, and if only he had fulfilled his primary duty of trying to learn the most basic of the facts about Census 2011 before issuing sweeping statements on a most complex issue, he would have been more worthy of the high seat in which he has been put by Akali Dal leadership.

To be fair, Makkar is not alone when he argues that asking people’s caste in the Census is wrong. Some very sane headed Indians also are under the impression that every Indian will be asked about his caste this time around. Many think that the earlier censuses never asked the caste, but now after a demand from some quarters, a decision has been taken to include a column for caste. Each single one of these is a fallacy of fact.

First of all, every single census has always counted the number of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes; only the OBCs, the Other Backward Classes, were not counted. The demand this time from some quarters was that the OBCs should also be counted.

Now, who are the people making these demands? Get introduced to them before you fall for the rhetoric of men like Makkar who think counting the OBCs will promote casteism.

It was none other that the Planning Commission which in its report on the Eleventh Five-year Plan (Vol 1, pg 118, 120, 2008) not only asked for such census but elaborated on the point in great detail. “Like SCs, STs, Minorities and persons with disabilities, there is an imperative need to carry out a census of OBCs now or in the next census in 2011. In the absence of exact assessment of their population size, literacy rate, employment status in government, private and unorganised sectors, basic civic amenities, health status, poverty status and human development and HPIs, it is very difficult to formulate realistic policies and programmes for the development of OBCs.”

What does Makkar and those opposing the OBC census want? That all policies and programmes should be carried out in the absence of any such data? The Punjab Government has no OBC-wise data on its population, neither has any other state government, and that is a major hurdle.

As Hari Narke, Professor and Head, Mahatma Phule Chair, University of Pune, has brought out, the OBC census is a class census and not a caste census. It needs to be pointed out to men like Avtar Singh Makkar that OBCs are not a caste but a socially and educationally backward class. That is the position under the Indian Constitution, the same Constitution under which the Sikh Gurdwara Act 1925 exists from which was born the SGPC.

Makkar should know that the SCs and STs are constitutionally recognised categories and so is the category called the OBC. The Constitutional recognition of SCs and STs are articles 341 and 342 and for OBCs it is article 340. Only, there was gross delay in implementing article 340 at the central level till as late as 1990, though lists of OBCs were made in the peninsular provinces and princely states even before Independence.

When Makkar asks Sikhs not to mention their caste, he is asking them to do something unconstitutional. Remember, Makkar is not just asking the OBCs not to give out their caste, he is asking all SC Sikhs not to give out their caste, since his appeal is addressed to all Sikhs. The SC Sikhs had to fight a lot to get a right to avail of the benefits, and they are availing these benefits in jobs and educational institutions. The Punjab Government, led by Makkar’s political masters, is formulating and claiming to formulate even more welfare schemes for the Scheduled Castes, and rightly so.

Makkar is right when he says Sikhism brooks no caste. But more than anyone else, Makkar knows the ground reality. Every one of us, and we believe that includes Makkar, desires a casteless society. But that is an ideal that is only possible when we address the chronic issues of historic marginalisation of certain classes, and counting the OBCs is a part of the effort to make any plans to address this marginalisation in any meaningful way.

Sikhism stands for social justice, and Makkar knows it all too well. If only Makkar had done a cursory reading of the issue, he would have been aware that the Standing Committee on Social Justice, 2006, headed by Sumitra Mahajan and comprising 28 MPs, “strongly recommend that Ministry should vigorously pursue with the Registrar General of India to conduct a survey of OBCs and the persons living below double the poverty line in this category so that the Ministry could prepare its Action Plan so that the required amount of funds can be made available to the State Governments for effective implementation of National Backward Classes Finance Development Corporations various schemes for the development of backward classes”.

The three Backward Classes Commissions in 1955, 1980 and 2004-05, apart from the National Commission for Nomadic Tribes, Semi Nomadic Tribes & Denotified Tribes (Renke Commission), 2008, was in favour of an OBC census.

The Parkash Singh Badal government, like any other state government, has to have special provision in the budget for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST). As per the Constitution, the OBCs also need a separate budget for their uplift. They have a constitutional right to basic amenities, employment, and shelter and unless we know their exact population, it will be difficult to make plans for them.

The biggest pain that the Sikhs suffered in contemporary history was the partition of Punjab that left the Sikh Quom separated from Sri Nankana Sahib, the birth place of the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak Dev ji. Many other gurughars also remained in Pakistan. Clearly, it was not caste but religion that inflicted the greatest pain. So, should Indians as a whole refuse to mention their religion to the Census officials? Is it not clear to anyone that India faced Partition because of religion?

Is it true or not that the SC/ST census on this country has been on for decades without any opposition? The SC census is a caste census; that has not been opposed. The OBC census is a class census; why is that being opposed? The OBCs roughly form some 52 per cent of the population; why must not they be counted? 

Are there Jat organisations in Punjab? Are there Dalit organisations? Is there not a Dhaliwal Sabha? Are there bodies of Sidhu-Brar Jats? Of Grewal Jats? Are there Lobana Bhawans in cities or not? Are there Aggarwal Dharamshalas? All castes have their organisations. And they all have annual days, bank accounts, even educational institutes. Not once have men like Makkar spoken against them, but they lose no time before seeking to stall the census for OBCs by telling Sikhs that it was some sort of a duty in the name of the Guru: Sikhism is against caste, so don’t tell the Census people your caste.

If Makkar and his ilk are indeed so inspired as to annihilate caste, they must address the many flaws that have crept into Sikhism. To be fair, the SGPC under Makkar and even before he took over, does recognise that the caste based gurdwaras do not augur well for a community that does not believe in caste. A more meaningful way for Makkar would be to take up within his party better agendas for addressing the caste issue. Can he issue a statement that those mentioning their castes in the matrimonial columns of various newspapers are not true Sikhs? Makkar will do better to read Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar’s book “Who Were The Shudras?” and engage with the work of Mahatma Jyotiba Phule who have given practical blueprints for caste annihilation in this country.

Sikhism is indeed against casteism. Avtar Singh, Makkar or not, is right. But social justice to all, equality and adequate representation in the power structure are prerequisites in a casteless society. There is no shortcut. To recognise the rights of a large percentage of people, they have to be counted first. To refuse to be counted, to ask people to refuse to be counted, and to ask them to bear the burden of the theory of Sikhism when the practice is exactly the opposite, is to burden them twice over. The great Sikh Gurus would never have done it. The president of the SGPC must not even dare.

Jaswant Singh's Homecoming & the Akali Dal

There are lessons to be learnt in managing contradictions and advancing politics 


Reva Sud

Akali Dal's alliance partner BJP is to witness a homecoming very soon: Jaswant Singh is to return to the partyfold 10 months after he was unceremoniously expelled for praising Pakistan founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah in his book.

It is heartening to see the BJP taking seriously the contentions made by Jaswant Singh in his book about Jinnah, and it is equally heartening to see the BJP having a macro look at the entire issue and re-induct into the party someone who has been forthright about his views.

Politicians dealing with the written word, or penning books themselves, have become a rare tribe in our country. One longs for a book penned by Parkash Singh Badal who has seen so much from a ringside view seat that could give Punjab rare insights into how we came to be where we are. Gurcharan Singh Tohra did not leave behind any account of the most troublesome years of which he knew more than many of the crop who rule today.

Jaswant Singh's return to the BJP also underlines a rather rare ability of the BJP top brass, particularly that of L K Advani, to resolve some of the most troublesome contradictions. After all, Advani had not stopped the process when Singh was expelled. But the senior leadership has displayed sagacity. This is how a national party should do damage control. No doubt Advani's stature has been a key factor in resolving this ugly issue.

An even more important aspect is that Jaswant Singh has not been forced to recant or deny any of the stuff that he wrote in his book that had angered the BJP so much. The book stays on the shelf, and on Singh's resume, as he re-enters the party with renewed respect and glory.

In Punjab, Parkash Singh Badal has a huge stature and the image of a moderate, and he could have displayed the ability to manage many contradictions, but sadly one is yet to see a determined move from the House of Badals to inculcate inner party democracy beyond the time honored tradition of "giving all rights to Pardhan Sahib".

Between Advani, BJP president Nitin Gadkari and the rest of the top leadership of the BJP, the party has proved that while it may slip in matters of inner party democracy, it has the resilience to control the damage, turn the page and draw new boundaries for debate.

The Badals have it in their power to do not only this but much more. History will judge Badal much more honourably if, at this stage in his political career, he turns his focus to strengthen the party rather than the hold of one family on the party. Poor Akali MPs and MLAs have almost forgotten what role they can play beyond eulogizing the leaders. A party thus hollowed from inside will not be worth presiding over.

On the other front, the Akali Dal in Punjab also must learn the importance of dealing with serious intellectual issues. The silence it adopted following Advani's book rankles one when seen in the context of BJP's own reaction to Jaswant Singh's book.

In his "My Country, My Life", Advani, who had claimed that it was under pressure from his party that Indira Gandhi was forced to undertake Operation Bluestar, had made many other troublesome statements but the Badals preferred silence to even a simple counter.

In a chapter titled "The Trauma and Triumph of Punjab" (pages 422 to 438), Advani said the "Khalsa panth was created three hundred years ago by Guru Gobind Singh, the last of the ten gurus, to defend the Hindus and protect Hinduism from the bigoted Muslim rulers of the time. (Page 424). By his silence, Badal endorsed that stance. Advani, when he needed to refer to some Ghadar revolutionaries, comes up with the names of Lala Lajpat Rai and Bhai Parmanand! Akali Dal's response? Silence.

Akali Dal can learn many lessons
in managing contradictions
and advancing politics 

Advani called Operation Bluestar "a success", calls Anandpur Sahib Resolution as "separatist" (Page 435), and opposes an all-India Gurdwara Act, and makes special effort to underline the Nirankaris as a "a spiritual movement". To all this, the Akali Dal's response? Silence.

One expected a response because Parkash Singh Badal was present at the function in New Delhi where Advani's memoirs were released and he shared stage with former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, the former Vice President of India Late Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat and none other than Jaswant Singh. (Those interested in reading a reporting of the function by the RSS mouthpiece Organizer can visit http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=230&page=18). As Badal sat listening to praises of the book, his silence later can be taken as an endorsement of Advani's stance. He owes it to his own fair name to draw the line.

Compare it now to Jaswant Singh actually taking upon Advani in his book when he narrated the Kandhar hijacking episode. And now consider the ability to manage contradictions as Advani works overtime to bring back this talent into the partyfold. Sardar Parkash Singh BadalAdvanis of this world, and yet it is possible to manage contradictions.

12 in a week, and search engines are still running in Kharar

Googling Miracles

Villagers here are running search engines on the internet to do in weeks what the govt could not in years

Nischay Pal

Ordinary folks in a Punjab village, awash in the spirit of humanity and endowed with remarkable common sense and some skill with the internet, have achieved a feat that police forces and babudom of several states, including Punjab, failed to accomplish even though they were duty bound to do so.

Villagers near Kurali in Punjab, who had found a mentally retarded man foraging for food in a pile of garbage, were able to win his confidence, coax out of him after many weeks a word, googled it to find that it was the name of a village in Madhya Pradesh's Bhind district, called up the administration there only to be told that the village fell under a different thana. Once again, they were searching websites of police of various districts till they found the relevant thana, spoke to the cops there and convinced them to visit the village of the man they had with them.

What happened next was nothing short of a miracle. Villagers in Pandapur in Madhya Pradesh told the cops from nearby Dehaat thana that one Mukesh of their village has been given up for lost, and there was little hope of finding him since he was mentally retarded and could not tell anyone who he was. The descriptions from Punjab and in Pandapur seemed to match. Soon, it dawned on all concerned that they were witnesses to a miracle. 

Activists of the Universal Disabled Care Taker Social Welfare Society were as overjoyed as the relatives of Mukesh, the man whose family travelled from Madhya Pradesh to village Padiala, not very far from Chandigarh, to reunite after 11 long years earlier this summer.  

Society president Shamsher Singh, his wife and founder member of the do-gooders' group Rajinder Kaur, and Charanjit Singh, the man with immense skills with using the powers of the search engines to make long lost kin reunite, were hardly satisfied with what they had achieved. For them, this was only one of the long list they were ticking off. And Charanjit was keenly trying to make sure that Mukesh's family members correctly noted down the details of the medicines he was taking. "I am so happy that Mukesh's wife is still living with her in-laws after so many years. May be in some corner of her heart, she had not given up hope. May be, this milaap was bound to happen, and our mission was only to be a vehicle," he said.

Mission Milaap. Charanjit loved the name and the challenge. And no one knows how many times in the course of a day does he beseech God to bless the guys who invented search engines. In the course of one week, he has been able to reunite 12 families. "You cannot believe what happens inside me when I see family members rushing to embrace someone whom they had given up for dead, or lost. I can live a lifetime to watch a moment like this just once more," he said. Charanjit, a chemical engineer by profession, describes himself a "chotta jiha sewadar" of the Society.

Shamsher Singh and his "chotte jihe sewadars" have so far ensured that Meeta, lost for three years, is reunited with her family in Moga, as is Sadhu whose family from Tohana in Haryana found him through Mission Milaap after 5 months. From Udaipur in Rajasthan, Kharar is a long way off, and no one knows how Jamna landed up here, but as to how she reunited with her kin, all credit goes to the Society. 

As I ask for more names, these come as a flood: Baani Singh, lost for three years, reunited with family from West Bengal; Saira Khatoon, lost for four years, finding her family from West Bengal so surprised to see her alive; Geeta Devi, lost for two months from Gurdaspur going back with her kin; Shanti, lost for four months, from Bharatpur in Rajasthan now beginning a new life; Dilbara Singh, lost for three years, finding his home again in Jagraon. Urmila of Mandi in Himachal Pradesh, Soma Devi from Amb, also in the hill state, besides Geeta of Bharatpur in Rajasthan. Each one a name for me that I was quickly scribbling down, but for Shamsher Singh and his band of do-gooders, each one was a complete story of what mysteries life can hold, and what miracles can common men and women perform.

"All you need is the determination and God will help you find a way," Shamsher Singh, a chemist by profession, was being philosophical in a chat with Punjab Today. Many years back, he had started on a journey without knowing where it would take him when he found an old destitute man whom he brought home and did not have the heart to ask him to leave after feeding him and taking care of him for a few days. Soon, there was another, and then another. The house was too small, and neighbours, their immense nicety notwithstanding, simply failing to understand how they were expected to help out by sheltering total strangers, and of them too, some seriously diseased.

"And what if someone died in your house? After all, some of them are very old, some very sick, and some both." Shamsher was being warned. "You would even land up in many police jhamelas

"But weren't you afraid of the police angle? After all, someone could die in that position, and there could be serious trouble," I asked him. He was calm. "I do understand that, but please try to understand my problem. If I am really a believer then I do understand that there is one Creator, and there is a certain path which is so clear to me that I must walk. Now, how do I answer my inner voice? By muffling it because of the fear of police, or by fearing that I would not be able to face my conscience if I did not take a sick man or a destitute child in?"

Shamsher tried to solve the problem in his own way. He had a doctor friend at the Post Graduate Institute (PGI) for Medical Education and Research in Chandigarh, and another at the Government Medical College and Hospital, Sector 32, Chandigarh. Off and on, he would take some patients there. He tapped the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC) too, thinking the cash rich body will help find some logistical solution.

Things were getting out of hand. Every day, some good Samaritan would bring one or the other fellow. A man in tatters, an old woman, an abandoned young girl found aimlessly roaming the streets, a child whose ribs were sticking out because of starvation. With treatment costs rising, three meals a day becoming quite a burden and an inner voice goading him not to give up, Shamsher refused to believe that there was nothing that he could do. At times, he would request a neighbour, at others he would erect a tent outside his home. In the winter of 2003, he was able to take a house on rent in Sector 37 of Chandigarh, but soon had to shift to Kharar. Then he took up a house in village Khanpur.

As numbers swelled, he and his fellow activists who had formed the Universal Disabled Care Taker Social Welfare Society by now, rented an accommodation for Rs 4,500 per month on Jhungian Road opposite the Kila Complex in Kharar. Disabled persons' care has its own set of problems. Once in a while, a psychiatric patient would jump over the boundary wall and all hell would break lose. Individual patients demanded special care. 

But the good work was not going unnoticed. One Kuldip Singh of Kharar gave them a one kanal plot. More philanthropists followed. Now, construction is in full swing on a 2-kanal plot, and some 175 people partake of the daily langar three times a day. The "home" has 150 residents.  

"Can you give me the names of your activist friends who help you out?" I asked Charanjit Singh. He was, however, more worried about the fact that I was not noting down carefully the names of the police people in various chowkis, thanas of different states who had responded very sympathetically to the Society's SOS calls regarding finding the families of various inmates.

"Please you must mention that Upadhyaye ji and head constable Prem Kumar Yadav were very quick to help in case of Mukesh. They had gone to his village the same day and by evening we knew we have succeeded."

I assured him I will definitely mention these good cops. "And please also mention Pawan Kumar at Amb, Ranjeet at Abhayapur in Himachal Pradesh, ASI Padam Singh at Kaman in Rajasthan, Tarsem at Bamial Chowki in Gurdaspur, Inspector Manik Kumar Kulia at Datun in West Bengal…" 

Charanjit was not letting me ask the one question that I had been trying to get him to consider. "ASI O.P. Singh at Surajpol in Rajasthan, sub inspector Swarup at Suti in West Bengal, Tarsem at Jagraon in Punjab…."

"But tell me, was it not the job of all these cops, all of our administrators to do all of this that you have been doing? I mean why were the police officers not getting all the details and running searches on the internet, why was the administration not taking care of the destitute? How the hell can Mukesh remain a lost man for 11 years? What the hell was the police from Madhya Pradesh to Punjab doing for eleven years?" I was getting furious.

The problem was that everyone knew, and I knew, that we all knew the answers. The difference was that Shamsher and his ilk knew what was to be done and they were doing it. And they were advising me to about what must to write in my report. "Forget the cops. Please help us. Here is what you can do. Please write that now police in most states have their own websites, and it is possible to often find phone numbers of thanas, chowkis etc and make inquiries. What we are doing under Mission Milaap is so easily replicable. We must harness the power of technology. May be someone somewhere will read this and try to do it in his village or town. That will be a real service."

Oh Shamsher, how easy do you make it seem! What makes me wonder is how you found it easy to keep that first old destitute man in your house? Most of us do not take that first step. May be the rest start coming easy. But you can only find out after the first step. There still are things you can't google about.

THE BLACK LIST: Dear Sukhbir, it’s time you clinched this one!

Preet Inder Singh

What is safer? That a few Indians who have been put on some kind of a Black List are permitted to return and report to law enforcement authorities, checked out and whetted, and allowed to participate in the country’s life as full citizens under the gaze of the law, or be permitted to stay out, and try and smuggle themselves into the country and remain out of the ambit of legal authorities?
India has a choice. In the case of Jammu and Kashmir, where an insurgency is still going on and where Pakistan has an abiding interest to fish in troubled waters, India is making the right choice. In the case of Punjab, where militancy is a thing of the past and where youth are miles removed from notions of separatism, New Delhi has displayed a poor judgement so far.
Now, thankfully, the Akali Dal government seems to have gotten serious about the issue. It has officially taken up with the Centre the issue of the so-called Black Listed Sikhs, and has given a political impetus to the demand with the Akali Dal’s Core Committee this week unambiguously asking the Union Home Ministry to do away with such a list.
The meeting also focussed on a list of 180 Sikhs that the Union Home Ministry has sent to the government, and urged the Centre to make the list public. The people of Punjab would ideally like the Punjab Government of Parkash Singh Badal to ensure that this list is displayed on not just the Home Ministry’s website but also publicised by the state government.
The best part of the whole imbroglio over the Black List of Sikhs is the kind of broadspectrum political support that the issue has garnered. The BJP’s Avinash Khanna has taken up a few cases, and the Congress’ Sukhpal Khaira and Jassi Khangura have spoken out for some who figure on the Black List. Former CM Amarinder Singh has also argued that the so-called prohibitory list should be scrapped.
Amarinder, in fact, has go gone so far as to oppose his own party’s Minister, P. Chidambaram, who had said that the surrender policy would be limited to Kashmiri youth and not include Sikhs who had crossed over to Pakistan during militancy in Punjab and were ready to return as law-abiding citizens. Most of those on the list were guilty of merely provocative utterances.
When Chidambaram came visiting Punjab sometime back, he had asked the state government to submit a list of the youth who were black listed. That had shocked many quarters as it was believed in good faith that the state would have done at least this much. Amarinder himself claimed that he had submitted a list of misguided Sikh youth to the Centre six years ago.
Now, the state government and the political parties in Punjab should rise to the occasion, dumping partisan politics to ensure that they put up a joint and united voice before the Centre.
Meanwhile, the old parents and relatives of the youth on black list are pining away to death, increasingly losing hope that they will see their loved ones again. Many of these youth have settled down in various countries, having got married and all, but the homesickness has become their bane.
Some youth may have been carried away by the passions of those times but so many years have passed since that they deserve another chance. One such was Rachpal Singh who was a student at Amritsar’s Khalsa College and whose father Gurdeep Singh Baggar still longs to see him. Off and on, the cops knock at the door of the family. It is time that Rachpal returned and the knocks stopped.
Sukhpal Singh Khera, the Congress’ MLA from Bholath, was recently successful in getting the name of one Daljit Singh removed from the black list. Daljit was forced to spend 25 years in the US.
Rajya Sabha MP Tarlochan Singh has urged Chidambaram in letter not to hesitate to give a chance to the Sikh youth who crossed borders in the wake of disturbances in Punjab after Operation Blue Star in 1984.
It is heartening to know that even Union Minister and National Conference (NC) patron, Farooq Abdullah, has assured that he will discuss the issue of amnesty for black listed Sikhs at par with those of Kashmir with CM Parkash Singh Badal. For Sukhbir Singh Badal, who also heads the Home Department in Punjab, the Black List issue can be a touchstone one and he can carve out a name in the state polity by getting this resolved. At this time in polity, the issue seems pretty resolvable. Will Sukhbir Singh Badal do enough to romp home with credit?

Punjab is committing suicide

Punjab Today editorial
from June 19-25, 2010 edition


On a day so important for Punjab because it was the anniversary of Operation Bluestar, the mass circulation Punjabi daily 'Ajit' published an editorial on environmental concerns. Though Dr Barjinder Singh Hamdard, who personally signed the editorial, did not explicitly say so, his choice of choosing to focus on the environment and poor health of Punjab's soil, water and air underlines some interlinkages that many simple minds miss. The reverse violence of Green Revolution that left in its wake unemployment, agri-stagnation, skewed development and poor social parametres formed a great component of the reasons behind the militancy years that Punjab suffered.
Within the next ten days, Dr Hamdard was back, editorially, penning yet another well argued missive on environment under the title "Sarkaran suchet hon" (Governments must stand aware). "The soil, that produces our food, has turned into poison....A sick mentality can only lead to a sick society," the editorial said.
On the same day, The Times of India carried a front page report titled "Parts of Malwa, Rajasthan drinking poison?" It revealed shocking discoveries by a German lab that had tested water samples from five villages near Fazilka. The intrepid reporter of The Times of India followed it up the next day with yet another mind-jolting report from Faridkot that revealed how even the milk that the kids are fed contains uranium traces, and doctors are now looking for solutions in camel milk.
Toxicity is all around us. It is in our food chain. Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal's hometown Muktsar has registered 1,074 deaths due to cancer between 2001 and November 2009 while 668 others are on their deathbed. Reports say in Lambi alone, the home constituency of Badal, 211 residents lost their lives and 164 got afflicted with cancer in the last eight years. In Gidderbaha, the constituency of finance minister Manpreet Singh Badal, cancer cases are more a norm than exception.
These statistics are all from a health department survey report.
By the time scientists were fearing arsenic exposure, they are encountering uranium traces. Adults and children are suffering from cerebral palsy and mental retardation as a result.

When someone like Sant Balbir Singh Seechewal, himself a member of the Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB), says that the Punjab government is drafting anti-pollution laws only on paper and not implementing, it is time to be scared.
When editors of mass circulation newspapers start hammering a point through signed editorials, and one after the other report shrieks about the slow suicide that Punjab is committing, there should be no reason why our people, our government, and our civil society should waste even a single day in trying to stem the tide. Deathly cyanide is flowing from factories from Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Phagwara into drinking water sources. Malwa is sick. Sewage and untreated industrial waste is flowing into the rivers we worship. It is akin to someone kicking the pooja thali as you say your prayers before your deity.
Piecemeal methods will not work anymore. We need to re-think our view of what is development. We need to return towards sustainable agriculture. We need to end the chemical, radiation and biological toxicity. We are committing highway theft and robbery on resources that legitimately belong to our future generations.
There are none so blind as those who won’t see. It is time we climbed atop rooftops and shouted our neighbours, our children, our government and ourselves into doing something about what we all know is killing us. We need to deal with this problem as we would have done with a highway robbery. You don’t wait to act when you know of a dacoit planning his next hit. Punjab’s air, soil and water deserve no less.