Why Punjab is in no mood to celebrate this festive season
As the nation is in a festive mood, festivity is missing in Punjab. While protests are being held against the state government for failing to compensate farmers who lost their cotton crops, the entire Sikh community is up in arms after a series of sacrilege incidents were reported in the state.
With the 2017 Assembly elections in their mind, state's politicians have only added insult to injury by just visiting the families, who have lost their sole breadwinners, but not shelling out a single penny. Almost all Congress leaders, including former chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh, the AICC general secretary Shakeel Ahmed, party's Punjab unit chief Partap Singh Bajwa, and the AAP's national convener Arvind Kejriwal visited the affected families and offered their condolences. The Badals are yet to pay a visit.
Adding salt to their wounds, Union minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal said Punjab's farmers are well-off in comparison to those of other states. Deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal said only those who are not respected by their own family members are protesting.
"Please do not ask anything. I don't want to talk. Do not ask questions that remind me of my son. I have lost him and have only received assurances. Nobody helped us. My son has left the burden of a huge debt. My daughter-in-law too left home after his demise. The politicians who visited us were from opposition parties but nobody helped us," said mother of 28-year-old Kuldeep Singh, a cotton farmer of Chuge Kalan village in Bathinda who committed suicide on September 23.
Labh Singh, 70, a resident of Baiman Diwana village in Bhatinda has lost his two sons. Dozens of politicians visited his home to console him but nobody provided him succour. The state government also seems to have turned a deaf ear towards the poor man who is looking for financial help.
The condition of the family members of two farmers Gurjit Singh and Krishan Kumar, who died in police firing on October 14 is no different. Several politicians representing different parties have paid a visit to their homes but did nothing to uplift their condition.
The state government though has announced an ex-gratia but the families are yet to receive the cheques. Sacrilege incidents, which deeply hurt the Punjabis, also exposed the state government's functioning. While Punjab continues to face the heat of Sikh protests, radical Sikhs have ridiculed the police theories about foreign funding and foreign hand behind the incidents.
Radicals like Sukhjit Singh Deol who was accused of allegedly funding "sacrilege" incidents refuted it, saying the money was sent for his injured relative Rupinder Singh's treatment. The police had earlier claimed that they had evidence of a foreign hand behind the desecration incidents.
Radical Sikh groups claimed that the police neither produced the accused Rupinder and his brother Jaswinder Singh before the media nor have confirmed whether the pages torn from the holy books have been recovered.
Radicals also believe that the charges against the baptised Sikhs who allegedly tore the holy books are baseless as a baptised Sikh can never indulge in an act like this.