Floods last week caused widespread damage to life and property in Punjab. More than 100 persons lost their lives. Hundreds of animals perished, Thousands of houses were destroyed. Untold loss occurred to crops, the infrastructure suffered extensive damage. Thousands of people have been marooned. The maximum loss appears to have occurred in the villages along the three Punjab Rivers and rivulets. Lack of timely warning about the floods could have been responsible for the many lives lost. The embankments along the rivers gave way at many places because of mere paper work done by Punjab’s irrigation department in the name of carrying out drainage projects. However, all in all, the deluge in the state was caused by torrential rains for more than three days. It will take some time to assess the actual loss to life and property in Punjab.

The natural calamity in a way continued Punjab’s right to its river waters in terms of internationally and nationally accepted principle namely that the people living along the rivers have a prior right to the use of the nature’s bounty just as they are the first to suffer due to the nature’s fury. The people of Punjab were trying to assert their natural, human right on the eve of the week’s floods when | thousands of farmers were trying to organize a rally at Chandigarh to protest against the resumption of work on the proposed Sutlej Yamna river canal. Most of these farmers and political activists were arrested by the Indian police. The farmers are still in jails as the people outside suffered due to floods. It is tragedy that the Indian government is determined to crush the Punjab people’s natural, human rights to their rivers.

The irony 1s that while the people of Punjab mostly Sikh farmers suffer frequently due to nature’s fury, its bounty is enjoyed by Hindu farmers of Haryana and Rajasthan through the canal network forcibly built for them by India at the expense of Punjab. The tragedy is compounded when India’s anti-Sikh establishment provides little or no relief to Punjab following every major flood. Instead as if to tease Sikhs, the relief is invariably given to Haryana and Rajasthan who suffer the least.

 

Article extracted from this publication >>  July 16, 1993