This visit of mine to the Doaba heartland was inspired by the heart-rending details of how a group of Punjabi youth were left to their fate by unscrupulous travel agents and many of them became victims of frostbites and diseases. Some died. I wanted to know what such news does to the morale of Doaba youth forever trying to go West. This visit during my days with The Indian Express was on the day the vernaculars had carried the gory details, and everyone I spoke to was not just aware of the news but most even knew some of the youth who had suffered.
Doaba Has A Dream—It Is To Run Away
Sixty-year-old Jaswinder Singh tries his level best to hold back the tears as he narrates at his house the pathetic saga of what his young son Manjit Singh was going through in distant Prague. His younger son Gurdip is heart-broken. Just as we take leave, father and son start sobbing again.
“What happened to Manjit should not happen even to one’s enemies,” said the father. It was time for one final question. “Had you too ever thought of going abroad?” we ask Gurdip, and are stunned by the answer. “What do you think I will do here. Of course I would go. May be through a different travel agent.”
By now, it has become a deeply ingrained characteristic streak in the minds of Doaba youth that the only plausible way of making it big in life is to go abroad. Europe is like a fortress, with a pot of gold lying inside ready to be grabbed, and it is no more impregnable but continues to be difficult to breach.
Virtually everyone in Doaba has heard the Malta stories. Stories of the infamous shipwreck in the icy Ionian sea over four years ago. Ironically, lest Malta memories scare away a prospective immigrant, it is the travel agent who brings up the saga. “Ours is a fool-proof guaranty. Not like agents who will kill your son in Malta,” one family was told by Ajmer Singh, the travel agent accused by families of number of youth now stuck in Prague and elsewhere.
The youth who went looking for destiny in distant land they know frighteningly little about hail from families which are certainly not poor. Jaswinder Singh lived in a nice spacious house which had parking place for his new tractor. He owns over 20 acres of land, and does not have many liabilities but his son still wanted to go to Europe.
“It is nothing but the lure of lucre, big time moolah. I know that, but who does not need money or want more of it, particularly when you see so many of your neighbours bringing oodles of it home,” said father of another youth who also went through the nightmarish experiences and has not heard from his son for over a month now.
It is easy to understand his argument when one drives along Banga, Nawanshahr, Behram, Phagwara, all on way from Chandigarh to Jalandhar. Sixteen-bedroom houses, palatial mansions with gleaming jumbo-size vehicles parked inside dot the countryscape. NRI’s visiting home command a special respect in the village, as they often contribute significant amounts for projects in the region. It is not keeping-up-with-the-Jonses syndrome. It is much more than that. The choice, as they see it, is between being a nobody and a dollarman.
Consider the case of Ramanpreet Sidhu (not his real name). On one of his cousin’s visits home from Germany, he watched him with awe as the first thing the NRI visitor bought was a Tata Safari. Sidhu them accompanied him across Punjab as he went visiting relatives, and lavished them costly gifts. None of it was lost on Sidhu who chucked his studies and went looking for ways to go to Germany. Four years later, he is frustrated, still unemployed but rather more determined. So much so that he joined a short-duration journalism course run by a German scribe in Jalandhar and has learnt German – all in the hope of making it there someday.
“The ‘lure of lucre’ argument is just one aspect, though very potent, in this game where youth are transported as human cargo into land of milk and honey and left to mint money by doing mostly menial jobs. It is hightime someone starts looking at the other aspect, the job opportunities which are simply not there, the ever-declining incomes from the agri-sector,” said Gurmit Singh Palahi, principal of Community Polytechnic near Phagwara and known for his community-management skills.
The law’s long arm has often failed to stem the tide of fly-by-night travel agents who operate from makeshift offices in towns across Punjab, though it would take only a couple of decoy customers to blow the lid off.
“In most cases, as in the latest one, neither party prefers to go to the police. The travel agent keeps promising that the ‘cargo’ would reach ‘its’ destination while for the family, the agent is the only hope. Police, going by their track record in bringing such cases to book, does not exist as an option,” admitted a senior police official.
Nawanshahr SSP Ishwar Singh said he has addressed umpteen number of meetings of sarpanches and village elders warning them about the shady travel agents. “I have also registered a large number of cases, and have forgotten the count as to how many agents I have put behind bars, but then in every case they were bailed out by courts, and people still patronise them. It is a social problem and needs urgent attention of the entire community,” he said.
Meanwhile, people in Punjab’s village make no bones about their psyche regarding the foreign shores. “You see the watertanks in the shape of a big aeroplane atop some big NRIs’ houses on the way. Well, that is what my mind always keep thinking about. Flying to Canada. And then come back and build a house just as big. And I will not forget to build an aeroplane model on top, just like the aircraft which will take me to Canada. You just wait and see,” says 23-year-old Buta Singh in Khatkar Kalan, the ancestral village of martyr Bhagat Singh who went to the gallows seventy years ago to make sure the people don’t suffer from slavery of the west.
(See also: 4 years after Malta, Indian Govt plays dumb, Fortress Europe deaf)
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