Streetlights hit by maintenance blues
Amritsar, April 7
The shortage of staff in the streetlight wing of the municipal corporation (MC), which illuminates various city points, roads and chowks, has badly affected the maintenance work of streetlights.

Youth politically alive to issues, but lack perspective
Amritsar, April 7
In spite of the fact that the contemporary youth is politically alive to the issues pertaining to the country due to tremendous media exposure, but surprisingly they lack political perspective.

Inclement Weather
Agri Dept brings down anticipated
wheat yield target
Amritsar, April 7
Owing to the fact that a sizeable number of
electorates in the district are directly or
indirectly associated with farming, the
issue of the continuous damage to crops
due to untimely rains might just end up
as a poll plank.

Development a distant dream for Ward No 2
Amritsar, April 7
Even as some of the localities in Ward No 2 benefited for being situated near the Guru Nanak Dev University, a considerable portion of ward is categorised as slum.

Amritsar, April 7
In gross violation of the Chief Election Commission, huge hoardings, urging voters to vote and support sitting BJP MP, Navjot Singh Sidhu, who is seeking re-election from the Amritsar parliamentary constituency, have eclipsed the Improvement Trust’s Nehru Shopping Complex.

Interestingly, a hand-written note on the hoarding, with the heading - To whom it may concern - said, “We are putting this hoarding on our own and we have not been pressurised by anyone. We will abide by the order of the election commission.”

The undertaking has been given on behalf of one Ravneet Outdoor Solutions and carries pictures of Sidhu, Anil Joshi and Anuj Sikka, BJP’s MP, MLA and councillor. However, senior government officials are silent on the issue.

The posters of cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu have also mushroomed on the Bhandari Bridge even as he himself had launched a cleanliness drive in the holy city by removing his own posters on January 24.

While removing the posters, Sidhu, accompanied by Mayor Shavet Malik, announced that no individual had the moral right to put up his poster in the city. Now, huge hoardings put up on buildings may earn the wrath of the Election Commission.

Earlier, the municipal corporation had taken the initiative to remove the “Lotus Chowks” put up by the BJP after the matter was highlighted in The Tribune.

The Punjab and Haryana High Court had imposed a blanket ban on such hoardings on the rail track and roads within the municipal corporation limits as it distracted the attention of drivers and caused accidents.

However, it is learnt that the BJP had secured the permission through back door to put up hoardings on the Bhandari Bridge on behalf of a private company which had the advertisement rights in the corporation limits.

However, no such permission seems to have been taken to deface the Improvement Trust’s building by a political party.

He demanded action under the model code of conduct and under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958.

Amritsar, April 7
The shortage of staff in the streetlight wing of the municipal corporation (MC), which illuminates various city points, roads and chowks, has badly affected the maintenance work of streetlights.

The corporation provides streetlight services to a population of more than 15 lakh of the holy city and has installed more than 15,000 street light points in different parts of the city, especially streets, busy markets, chowks and main bazaars.

However, contrary to this, the corporation has less than 40 employees for the maintenance of these points.

Although the corporation has given a tender of maintenance of streetlight points to six private electric companies, patrolling for finding faulty streetlight points, attending complaints regarding faults and others corporation electric works is the responsibility of the employees.

Even the cumbersome duty of the repair of streetlights in various government and corporation offices is the responsibility of these employees.

At present the corporation has a total of only two junior engineers against the requirement of five, one Xen, one SDO, 11 streetlight patrollers and about 23 ad-hoc employees.

According to the authorities, the streetlight department requires at least a dozen patrollers. Besides, at least 20 more employees may be on a contract basis.

They added that they did not even have men for the corporation-owned Guru Nanak Bhavan city centre.

The slum areas of the city were creating more problems for the city, increasing the burden of work.

Officials, on condition of anonymity, said people in the slum areas had put up kundi connections putting extra burden on power cables of streetlights, due to which the wires got damaged and it took a lot of time for replacing and repairing the fault.

When this correspondent tried to contact Mayor Shwet Malik for his comments, he did not pick up the phone.

Meanwhile, MPS Bedi, XEN, streetlight wing of the corporation, admitted that work had adversely been affected due to the shortage of staff.

However, he said the department was trying its utmost to address the complaints of the general public.

However, he added that the authorities were aware of the issue of shortage of staff and it was up to them to solve the problem.

Amritsar, April 7
In spite of the fact that the contemporary youth is politically alive to the issues pertaining to the country due to tremendous media exposure, but surprisingly they lack political perspective.

For this reason, youngsters are evincing more interest than seen before. Yet it is incongruous with the fact that nearly 78 per cent of those contesting elections in the ensuing 15th Lok Sabha elections are above the 55 years of age.

Meanwhile, general disillusionment among the youth could be contributed to political parties failing to connect a rapport with the youth of the country.

Moreover, Congress’ prime ministerial choice Manmohan Singh is 77 while the BJP’s preference for the same post is L.K. Advani, who is 78.

Perhaps for this reason the political parties are chalking out various strategies to
attract the youth.

Parties have taken online advertising route to attract young web users while
others are beaming advertisement with film songs playing in background on various
electronic channels.

A third-year BCA student of DAV College, Danisha, said “I see senior leaders of
major parties expressing views like over-to-the-youth yet I do not find many
young faces in politics.”

She added that whatever handful young leaders were in Indian politics they hardly came from grass-roots level. Most of them were sons and daughters of politicians.

A student of Khalsa College, Manpreet Singh, felt that youth like him were not able to develop perspective and opinion on politics and political parties.

The political parties came close to them only near elections in the shape of rallies, political meetings and advertisements.

According to him, he tries to make opinion regarding candidates through mouth of people, print and electronic media and his own individual preference.

Another youngster, Ritu Khurana, took off from work to get her voter ID card prepared as she had somehow missed the opportunity earlier.

According to her, she felt the need to vote this time as global recession had
taught her that only able leaders would be able to cope with the emerging
international challenges.

Amritsar, April 7
Owing to the fact that a sizeable number of electorates in the district are directly or indirectly associated with farming, the issue of the continuous damage to crops due to untimely rains might just end up as a poll plank.

The two spells of inclement weather have forced the agriculture department to rethink the set target for this season bringing down the anticipated target of the average yield of wheat to 43.5 quintal per hectare, compared to last year’s 44 quintal per hectare.

The agriculture department had earlier set a target of 44.5 quintal wheat per hectare. Normal to heavy rain, accompanied by strong winds, lashed the district for about six hours on April 6 while hailstorm had caused damage to fields in Attari and nearby villages, located along the international border.

Worsening of weather, twice, within four days, caused colossal damage to the standing wheat crop.

It was a severe blow to farmers who were yet to come out of about 20 per cent loss to crops, as per the assessment of the agriculture department, in the two spells of inclement weather last month.

Agriculture experts are of the view that rain would delay harvesting, which normally begins here in mid-April.

Kanwalpreet Singh Pannu, convener, Kissan Sangarsh Committee, said farmers had been hit hard by untimely rains.

He added that the committee decided to include the demand of full compensation to the farmers in its forthcoming meeting on April 11.

A farmer, Jaspal Singh from Preetu Kotla village in Majitha sub-division, who has grown wheat on seven acres, said the rain dashed his hopes to pick up grains which were lodged after the two spells of inclement weather.

Chief agriculture officer (CAO) Paramjit Singh Sandhu said 11mm rain was recorded on April 6.

He feared that the unexpected turn of weather could deteriorate the quality of wheat and could also bring down the yield.

Amritsar, April 7
Even as some of the localities in Ward No 2 benefited for being situated near the Guru Nanak Dev University, a considerable portion of ward is categorised as slum.

Paradox of highest seat of education and slums in want of light of literacy and development are located with in a specific gap in this ward, which used to be part of Chheharta Municipal Committee before it was amalgamated with the Amritsar Municipal Corporation over three decades ago.

If Dashmesh Avenue locality houses residences of a number of varsity’s employees then there is a slum colony Kale Pind and Dhaka colony.

A resident of the colony Mahinder Kumar said his area received civic amenities like roads, street lights and civic amenities late while repair work always was rarely carried out. It caused further damage of roads and other facilities.

A number of residents are working in nearby located British period OCM and Coca
Cola factories.

Pashori Nagar is the abode of families who had migrated from Peshawar following formation of Pakistan.

The ward is a proof of the growing holy city as once it used to be a part of village. It has got middle and secondary schools.

The area, once abound with lush green fields now cry for a single park. A shopkeeper at Vikas Nagar Rajwinder Singh said the area did not have a proper park.

Councillor of the ward Sunil Dutti claimed that during his stint as Mayor of the city from 2002 to 2007 he had brought sewerage to those areas which had been deprived of it. Besides two tube wells were also installed.

Amritsar, April 7
Even as hue and cry was being raised over beautification work in the historic Jallianwala Bagh, a person has found a novel way for raising his demand for installation of martyrs’ statue in the national monument.

Om Parkash, a tea stall owner near the joint checkpost at Attari, has displayed photographs of Shaheed Udham Singh, Bhagat Singh, Raj Guru, Sukhdev, Suhash Chander Bose and Chander Shekhar Azad at his shop to create awareness in this regard among thousands of visitors who come see the Beating Retreat ceremony daily performed by the jawans of the Border Security Force and Pakistani Rangers.

Parkash, who claims himself to be the grandson of freedom fighter Praag Datt Shukla, a close associate and cook of Subash Chander Bose, said the government should preserve the national monument in its original shape and should not disturb its heritage value.

He said whenever changes were to be made to the national monument it should be done after consulting various patriotic and political organisations.

It may be mentioned here that a concrete gallery was being made for Light and
Sound programme to attract more and more visitors at Jallianwalla Bagh to hold
special programs on eve of birth and death anniversaries of freedom fighters
(including Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, Udham Singh and Sukhdev) who laid down
their lives for freedom.

Every year official function is organised on April 13 to remember the hundreds of innocent freedom fighters who fell to the bullets fired by the British Government.

Recently nearly 500 youth organised a rally at the Jallianwalla Bagh criticising the state government for erecting structure inside the national monument, as it was destroying the pristine historic glory of this place.

They described the construction in the Jallianwalla Bagh as tempering with the age-old original structure.

Parkash said that he was not in favour of organising protest rallies and damaging the national monument as it gives bad impression among the tourists who come to the place from across the globe.

He said he has displayed the photographs to show the tourists from abroad the love which the countrymen have in their hearts towards its martyrs.

Stressing on building strong characters, he asserting that it was important to be the followers of truth and truthfulness.

Earlier, Dr Neelam Kamra, Principal of the college, welcomed the delegates and participants. J. Kackria, president, Arya Pradeshik Pratinidhi Up-Sabha, presented the vote of thanks and emphasised that whatever difficulties might be there in the present hour, it was absolutely essential to remain steadfast on the path of truth.

Amritsar, April 7
The BJP has virtually made the CBI’s clean chit to Congress leader Jagdish Tytler and allocation of tickets to Tytler and Sajjan Kumar an election issue to garner the support of Sikhs, especially in Punjab.

Balbir Punj, in charge, state BJP affairs, on behalf of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), today announced that if their government came to power, it would ensure “speedy trial” of the accused in the killing of innocent Sikhs, besides reopening of the case against Tytler.

He said only 13 accused had been convicted in the gory massacre so far. He said the UPA government had parted ways with its major alliance partners, including the RJD, led by Lalu Parsad Yadav, LJP, led by Ram Vilas Paswan, and PMK, who have split up with the Congress.

While three other allies - NCP in Maharasthra, JMM in Jharkhand and Trinamool Congress in West Bengal - were doubtful. He said the UPA had vanished from the political map of the country.

“The UPA is neither united, nor progressive while its major party Congress is isolated at present”, said Punj.

Quoting some data, he said according to the human development index issued by the UN, India has slipped to 132nd position from 127th during 2004 while in the global corruption perception index the country is down by 13 positions from 72 to 85, since 2004.

Punj also pointed finger at the Rs 10,000-crore defence deal with Israel. He said the deal, made just few days before the announcement of parliamentary elections, had raised many an eyebrows.

The report says that 477 projects were completed at a cost of Rs 719.64 crore during the last five years.

The BJP MP said opposition leaders were trying to malign his image besides misleading the public about the utilisation of MPLAD funds by him.

Amritsar, April 7
The 6th fashion forecast cast its spell on a large number of city people, especially women, who thronged the two-day exhibition held at Amritsar.

Trendy and fashionable garments, clothes besides designer jewellery, designer and leather bags, furniture, and electrical gadgets were the main attraction.

The exhibition organised by Tania Chatha had as many as 60 exhibitors from across the country displaying their creations.

The exhibitors came from Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, New Delhi, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Phagwara, Una and Hisar.

Chatha said the exhibitors displayed their products, including stitched and unstitched cloths, jewellery (real and semi precious), furniture, home refinement items including bed linen, cushion covers etc.

Porcelain items like decorative pieces, paintings, candle stands, footwear, vases, bags, health products like massage chair and massagers were part of the exhibition.

For the first time Shalini Beriwal, topmost designer for lifestyle gifting and packaging, gave live demonstrations of creating decorative pieces from waste materials.

Amritsar, April 7
My home town, known as “Guru Ki Nagri”, is very important destination from tourist point of view as more than one lakh people visit the holy city of Amritsar daily.

There are many places of interest to visit in and around the city such as Golden Temple, Attari/Wagah Border, International Airport, Ram Bagh (the summer palace of erstwhile Sikh ruler Maharaja Ranjit Singh) and Durgiana Temple, etc.

When we enter into the city, we all know that the work on the elevated road is on progress, but the service lanes on bother sides of the elevated road have not be maintained for the smooth flow of traffic.

The contract period which was over has been extended by another term of around one year due to some financial problems being faced by the municipal corporation.

We all know that “first impression is the last impression” so firstly, we have to maintain the entry of the city as the roads filled with potholes give bumpy rides to the visitors besides being greeted with the air filled with dust and mist.

If we enter the Hall Gate to visit the Golden Temple from the Bhandhari Bridge or from the bus stand then the situation is not so good as there are lot of encroachments on the way.

The shopkeepers have encroached upon the pavements leaving hardly any space for the pedestrians. So, they are creating problems for the public and the tourists who have to walk on the roads causing traffic snarls.

The pavements have been encroached upon by the rehriwalas with the connivance of the authorities that be.

Traffic pollute the whole environment, which is harmful for the people as well as for the external walls of Golden Temple besides the water of holy sarovar at the shrine.

“Development not at the cost of heritage,” such hollow slogans cannot replace
the hard deeds.

There is a lack of parking space in the city and the authorities should construct multi-storey parking lots in the Hall Bazar in Kairon Market or Town Hall itself.

The Municipal Corporation has built a parking place on the Bhandari bridge, but the people hardly use it as it was not in close proximity to the Golden Temple.

The Improvement Trust parking lot in Nehru Shopping Complex on the posh Lawrence Road also suffers the same fate.

We need a master plan for the city and in fact, keeping in view next 25 years
of expansion, we have to make such a plan so that the vehicles don’t enter
into the walled city.

And there should be parking lots outside the walled city, and people should be advised to enter into the walled city by non-polluting vehicles such as tongas, cycles, cycle-rickshaws or vehicles which are battery-operated. Only then we can control the increasing level of pollution in the city.

Another picture of my city is that whenever there is a rain all the roads get filled up with water, because of lack of sewerage and drainage system.

There is also garbage littered on the roadside and in the nearby residential colonies as the MC workers do not lift it at proper time.

The four-laning from the Amritsar-Jalandhar road to Nankana Sahib is likely to eradicate much greenery.

At least three trees should be planted in place of one which would be axed. There is also a need for separate tracks of auto-rickshaws in the city.

In the most chowks the traffic signals are not working properly. The red and
green lights glow simultaneously. People get puzzled that whether they have
to stop or to move on.

So for all the problems, which I have narrated above, serious attention by the authorities concerned is the need of the hour.

If they are able to give smooth and hassle-free travel to the visitors, pollution-free air, sufficient parking lots for the vehicles, maintain parks and provide proper basic infrastructure, then people visiting the city from across the globe would come to “Guru Ki Nagri” again and again.

A Chinese proverb is: “If you are planning for a year, sow rice, if you are planning for a decade, plant trees, if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people.”

Modern era is an age of globalisation and liberalisation where technology has changed the educational set-up in a revolutionary manner.

Education in the 21st century has also been severely affected by so many social and cultural evils.

It is noteworthy to mention here that the cultural values of our society are being depleted in this educational century and it seems to be a blot on our country.

The whole system of westernisation and industrialisation has destructed the lifestyle, customs and traditions of our ancient socio-cultural aspects.

Talking about the social evils, it needs to be highlighted here that dowry has shaped the whole Indian society in a negative and declining fashion.

The headlines of the newspapers reflect the cases of dowry in which newly married women got burnt while working on stoves or consuming poison.

Alcoholism and poverty have really entrapped the whole Indian unemployed society in their grip.

Due to population explosion during the late 20th century, the sources of job opportunity have declined to a large extent which has resulted in unemployment among the youth and hence poverty.

Data reveal that in India 15 per cent people live below the poverty line (BPL) and are not even certain to meet their needs of food.

Child labour is another social evil which directly challenges the human rights. Parents do not send their children to schools but force them to do small jobs in industries to earn their livelihood.

Female foeticide is the social evil which demands special attention in this modern age. Everyone knows that the sex ratio is declining day by day. Certain doctors kill the foetus in the womb.

Many scanning centres are in operation in our society but the authorities do not seem to have taken enough steps to curb this menace.

Crime and corruption are other social evils which also demand special attention in society. Drugs and narcotics are being pumped into the blood streams of the youth.

Now, the question arises what role a teacher can play in the eradication of these socio-cultural evils.

No doubt, the students are the nation builders but the teachers are the path guiders for building this nation in the progressive manner.

It is the high time to make teachers aware of the challenges in front of them for the improvement of the educational system in relation to socio-cultural evils. The teacher has to make the parents and students aware of their duties in society.

The teacher alone cannot make a remarkable role in this regard. The association of parents and general public can boost this role to a greater extent.

The lessons on moral and cultural values must have to be introduced in the curriculum of school boards.

Besides, students must be taught about their cultural heritage and its preservation in different contexts.

Amritsar, April 7
Renowned surgeon and social activist Dr Harbilas Rai (77) passed away last night after brief illness at his residence.

Dr Harbilas has been associated with a number of educational institutions, religious organisations and social societies of the city.

A former professor of surgery at Amritsar Medical College and Hospital was born on February 1, 1932, at Khanna township and completed his MBBS and MS.

Dr Harbilas have been associated with a number of educational institutions, including DAV schools and colleges.

He took over as chairman of the premier Sri Ram Asharam School and started its public school wing in 1999 as the school was going through difficult times.

A number of organisations, including fraternity of doctors, laid wreaths on the the mortal remains before he was consigned to flames at the Shiv Puri cremation ground this morning. He is survived by his widow, two daughters and a son.