Only the spirit of Punjabiyat can save Punjab

WHILE reflecting on contemporary Punjab, the word that repeatedly comes to mind is: crisis. Every aspect of our socio-political life — leadership, fiscal burden, deliverables or agriculture, industry, employment and infrastructure generation — is facing a crisis. Add to this, the crisis of credibility of our rulers.

We need to ask ourselves: How did Punjab, once a prosperous state, turn into a crises-ridden one? In 1981, it was the top-ranking state in GDP per capita; today, it is at the 16th position. The Green Revolution had turned it into the food bowl of India, but now the state is hard pressed to purchase paddy from its farmers. In less than 10 years, its debt burden has alarmingly increased by more than three-fold: from Rs 1,12,000 crore to an astronomical Rs 3,43,000 crore.

A recent study by social scientists at PAU is startling. Covering 44 villages across 22 districts, it states that between 1990 and 2022, villagers borrowed Rs 14,342 crore and sold assets worth Rs 5,638 crore to fulfil their dreams of going abroad. Unlike earlier generations, which went on work permits, present-day youth is migrating for education. Besides compounding the social and financial woes of the common man, this may impact future foreign remittances.

As per a report submitted in Parliament last year, there are around 6.6 million drug users in Punjab, including men, women and children. As far as drug deaths go, Punjab has a share of 21 per cent, that too, in the age-group of 18-30. Though drug addiction is already an epidemic, threatening to change the state's demographic profile, we don't seem to be making any productive interventions to curb or control it.

Our youth is so disillusioned by the failure at all levels that they just don't want to stay back in Punjab. What kind of a society have we created for ourselves where the youth either lives in hopelessness or in a state of perpetual flight? After all, whose future are we trying to shape through our politics and policies if we can't motivate our youth to participate in our shared growth?

As far as elections go, Punjab has never followed a predictable pattern. Yet, the February 2022 Assembly elections were a watershed event. For the first time since 1947, the people voted overwhelmingly for a 'party', not because they were convinced about its ability to deliver on the poll promises, but because of the complete disillusionment with the well-entrenched political parties. A hurricane pushed in as many as 92 candidates of a particular political party in the Assembly and pushed out four former chief ministers, ending their political careers.

For close to three decades, especially after the days of militancy, Punjabis waited desperately for effective political leadership to take hard, futuristic decisions. But the political class in Punjab, treating politics as an industry, had begun to govern the state as a personal estate. Over the years, it is the politics of opportunism, self-gratification and money and muscle power that has played itself out on an unprecedented scale. Having lost faith in electoral politics, the people feel that they are more like vote-casting machines (VCMs), controlled by money and/or muscle power, activated every five years, and not 'citizens' anymore. Before and after the elections, they feel invisibilised, like Gurdial Singh's ‘Unhoye’.

In February 2022, it was this sense of hopelessness at the grassroots level that worked for AAP. Not that things have improved in the last two-and-a-half years. During the recent panchayat elections, some posts were openly auctioned and candidates bought and sold like cattle. One wonders if politics is only about money or does it have something to do with governance, too? The more the scale of corruption, the greater the distance between those who govern and those who are governed. The result: a 'systemic failure'.

It is this 'systemic failure' that impacts every sphere of a Punjabi's life. Be it land allotment, approval of a construction plan, creation of infrastructure, cleaning up of water resources or supplying of electricity, it is this 'systemic failure' that becomes an ordinary citizen's nightmare. Freebies doled out with an eye on the vote bank only make matters worse.

The failure of the state to address the agricultural crisis is a systemic failure, too. Today, we produce more wheat and paddy than is needed by the market. This 'surplus' has resulted in farmers' distress. Agricultural scientists have repeatedly warned that the present cropping pattern is resulting in depleting water table, but no action plan has been put in place. They also say that if crop diversification is not done on priority, within a decade or so, the 'desertification' of Punjab may become a reality. Crop diversification might lead to a proliferation of agro-based industries and help in income and employment generation, too.

It is pertinent to ask: What kind of a self-image do we have? Do we think of ourselves as a feudal society, a modern or a postmodern one? To my mind, we are neither, and yet, in a strange way, are an amalgamation of all these. We may be feudal, even medieval in our belief-systems, in our undying affiliation to patriarchy, the near-absence of gender justice, and our veneration of 'deras' and 'godmen'.

Though outwardly, we may have acquired the trappings of modernity, even postmodernity, such as a flashy dress code, swanky cars, debt-ridden lifestyles and opulent marriage palaces and shopping malls, internally, we remain hopelessly divided along the lines of religion, politics, caste and class.

History tells us that despite all the challenges we faced in the past, Punjab continued to be a dynamic cultural space, where diverse social, religious groups lived in constant dialogue and interaction. In the past, our battles were purposive, because we were fighting the enemy outside, not the enemy within. Now that we are fighting the enemy within, our battles have become destructive of the very fabric of our Punjabiyat — an abiding expression of our composite culture and a marker of our identity and self-recognition.

We can configure Punjabiyat through the visual image of 'phulkari', a metonymic, cultural symbol. Using a variety of silken threads in bold colors, Punjabi women collectively weave imaginative designs, transforming the fabric into a richly textured artwork. If even a single thread snaps, the entire pattern gets unravelled.

Punjabiyat is, truly, a collage of colours and forms, a shared heritage of Hindus, Sikhs, Christians and Muslims, which evolved through centuries of dialogue across the Vedantic thought/philosophy, liberalism of the Sufis, religious piety of the Christians, and the democratic, secular spirit espoused by the Sikh Gurus.

It is my conviction that if there is anything that can save Punjab through its worst crisis, it is this spirit of Punjabiyat. If we somehow manage to protect and preserve it, we, too, might survive. Our collective survival is inextricably linked to it.

This article is an abridged version of the keynote address delivered by the author at a seminar on ‘Contemporary Punjab: Politics and Society’ held in Panjab University.