A Window To Perceptive Journalism

PUNJAB NOT SO SHINING,
YOU SAID SO IN ASSEMBLY

S P Singh

Chandigarh

Punjab is sinking.  

Each successive government in Punjab has claimed itself to be biggest friend of the farmers, and has a punch line to sell that stance. Akali Dal-BJP regime trumpeted free power to farmers, the incumbent Congress government mouths diversification and Johl panel reports. 

On the issue of urban area development too, similar patented lines exist. 

But a cursory reading of various data and reports of no other agency but the government itself shows under what extreme strain is Punjab's social fabric and how the sorry state of affairs is a result of cumulative inefficiency and official apathy. 

Governments do not admit everyday that they have messed it all up, but leave tell-tale signs of their failures in one or the other report, or in the innocuous answers to questions asked in the Assembly. The overall picture that emerges from putting together these facts points to a grim future of large sections left outside the 100MB-1GB e-mail debate.

Sample this: 

Of the 12,400-plus Punjab villages, 11,849 have been identified as "problem villages", a term used as a euphemism for villages where supply of potable drinking water leaves much to be desired. The information is provided by none other than Public Health Minister Jasjit Singh Randhawa in the Assembly in response to a question by Akali MLA Tarlochan Singh. 

"This after 57 years of Independence! Even in case of most of those villages where drinking water is adequately available, the credit belongs to many voluntary efforts," conceded a minister. 

When the Chief Minister of a largely agricultural state sets up a rendezvous with the Prime Minister, and goes with days of advance preparation and nicely-bound copies of state's fiscal health chart, here is what he tells the CEO of the country: "About 95 per cent of wheat stocks of the state/agencies are lying in the open mostly under unscientific storage condition." 

Clearly, there can be no more candid admission by any regime that the state has "totally" -- at least 95 per cent, for those wanting to be kind to the government -- failed in making arrangements for something as simple as creating storage space for foodgrains. This after incessant talk of Green Revolution! 

Sample another. On June 15, Education Minister Khushal Behl took the floor to explain why a large number of Government Senior Secondary Schools across the state, most of them in rural areas, are without principals for years.  

"Vocational lecturers had taken the matter to the court since 75 per cent of posts were to be filled through promotion quota. Now we hope to get the stay vacated," he said. Behl could have been more convincing, but witness his response to what happened to the rest of 25 per cent posts: "Guidelines to fill these posts are being finalised. Once this is done, we will fill these posts too." 

So Faridkot district has 23 schools without principals, Moga has 59, Muktsar 54, Ferozepur 69, Mansa 38, Bhatinda 56, Ropar 38, Ludhiana 106, Patiala 57, Fatehgarh Sahib 19, Sangrur 87, Hoshiarpur 64, Jalandhar 86, Amritsar 107, Gurdaspur 94, Kapurthala 42, Nawanshahr 39. Predicatably, strings are pulled for posting in urban areas, so rural schools suffer the maximum. 

Only today, Ramesh Chander Dogra, Health and Family Welfare Minister, enumerated the number of vacant posts of doctors in Government Hospitals and dispensaries, the medicare institutions which now largely attract the low income and poor groups. At the last count, 840 doctors' posts are vacant. Border districts of Ferozepur and Gurdaspur are among the acute sufferers with 104 and 106 vacancies respectively, information provided by the government in the Vidhan Sabha today revealed. 

State's veterinary infrastructure is already in doldrums, hundreds of veterinary hospitals and dispensaries are without doctors or pharmacists, class IV employees run many veterinary facilities and one doctor earmarked at times for a number of dispensaries/hospitals in different villages. This when the regime is never tired of ushering in milk revolution. 

Peruse the census data for how many walk how much to fetch drinking water, how many have access to a need as basic as a latrine. Water Works are in a shambles in most villages. The idea of career counseling for rural students in villages is utopian stuff. A village school having a computer is considered a feel good media story. The list is endless, the social fabric is under strain, but only if you don't lose your way in the 100 MB-1GB mail row din.

June 18, 2004

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