Disastrous Effect of Drain of Punjab Waters and Power:
The ruinous and despoiling effects of Central decisions are large scale both in the fields of agriculture and industry. At present out of 105 lakh acres of cultivated land in the Punjab about 92 lakhs are irrigated including about 37 lakhs by canals and the rest by tube wells. This indicates that the major part of irrigation and Punjab prosperity and production are due to private effort and enterprise. First, the capital cost and maintenance and running costs of these over lakh when wells are a heavy burden on the production costs of crops in the state. Current cost of tube well irrigation is 3 to 10umes more expensive than canal irrigation, depending upon the source of power. Apart from the fact that uninterrupted supply of power from diesel or electricity is hardly assured, the heavy over drawal of subsoil water exceeds the annual recharge by rains, seepage, etc. This is lowering the water table each year from one to ten feet. The present position of tube well immigration is that between 80 to 90 percent of the Community Blocks in the state have been branded as unsuitable for irrigation by tubewells. The clear warning given is that by the close of the century majority of these tubewells would become nonfunctional because of the continuous fall of water table. The second point is that available estimates suggest that ten lakh acres of existing canal irrigated areas especially from the Sirhind Canal area, would lose facility of canal water because water at present used in the state will have to be diverted to Haryana and Rajasthan under the present decision. In short, because of the lowering water table and diversion of canal waters about 60% of the area or about 50 lakhs acres would become barani or unirrigated. Under the present cropping system the question of dry farming does not arise. The holdings of small farmers being what they are, the resultant misery of a major part of the rural population can well be imagined . Its very serious effects on economic and social conditions in the state and their disturbing influence on the political life should be obvious. The annual loss of agricultural production would be of the order of 1.2 billion dollars. The loss in consequential industrial production and in the diversion of hydel power to other states would be still greater, The unfortunate part is that whereas hydel power from Punjab is being allotted to other states, thermal power plants are being installed in are Those being dependent on coal from distant states, the electricity generated by them is obviously several times more expensive than hydel power. Anandpur Sahib Resolution:
As explained, the basis of Anandpur Sahib resolution is not any snap decision or secessionist trend in Punjab politics, but it follows the assurances given by the Central leadership before 1947. Since 1949, the Akalis have been pressing the Central Government to give effect to their earlier policies and assurances. Since then the’ following additional factors have arisen to make it necessary that the state should have autonomous powers:
(a) In 1971 the Tamil nadu Assembly adopted the Raj manner Report, which requires that the Centre should have only four subjects as in the Anandpur Sahib resolution, and in addition, there should be a consultative Committee of Chief Ministers of states presided over by the Prime Minister to advise the Centre regarding the four Central subjects. Such views have also been expressed by West Bengal and other non-Congress Ministries.
(b) In the preceding 40 years the Centre has amended the Constitution a number of times to make it more centralized. For example, Education, Administration of Justice, constitution of Courts, have been made either concurrent or Central subjects. The percentage of discretionary grants to be given to the states from the Central revenue has been raised very considerably, thereby enabling the Centre to favour or punish any State it may like to do.
(c) The Centre has created non Statutory Or extra-constitutional bodies like the Planning Commission, the Water and Power Commission, the University Grants Commission, etc, which have great power not only to make financial allocations, but also have unfettered discretion to approve or disapprove state schemes which fall exclusively within the sphere of state functioning. By this method, the Centre could completely throttle all development in the state, should it choose to do so. A classic case is the construction of the Punjab Project of The in Dam which was to cost originally only 70 crores, but Punjab failed to receive final approval even though in the mean Lime its cost has risen to over 800 crores.
(d) Another factor is the frequent Central intrusion in state affairs by creating instability in a state and introducing President’s rule. For example, whenever a no congress Ministry was constitutionally formed in the Punjab, it was destablised followed by the President’s rule. This was felt to be a negation of the democratic will of the people.
(e) As the disastrous shackle of the Punjab Reorganization Act makes Punjab a sub-stale, the only way to promote socio political progress in the slate was to have full autonomy in the sphere of all development, planning and administration including control of water and hydel power of Punjab rivers.
(f) Under the existing political setup as in the Punjab Reorganization Act, the Centre has insisted on the construction of the Rajasthan Canal despite all expert advice to the contrary. International experts from the World Bank and other institutions clearly emphasized that the Project was economically unjustifiable and wasteful, and that at far less expense the use of Punjab river waters could be far more productive if utilized within the state. It shows that the Central decision neither served the national interests nor those of the P Punjab.
(g) Economic exploitation of Punjab in other fields has also been going on. Over 75% of the savings in Punjab Banks are diverted outside the state in order to develop other areas, Industrial licensing, and approval of projects being in Central hands, it has not allowed more than 2% of the cotton produced in the Punjab to be processed within the state. Similarly while Punjab is a major sugarcane producing area, large scale imports of sugar still take place from other states Another way of serious curtailment of the wealth of rural Punjab, which sustains about 80 % of the population, is by low pricing and monopoly procurement of wheat and rice which are in Central hands, Punjab suffers the most because about 60 % of wheat and a considerable part of rice are procured from Punjab by the Centre for distribution in deficient or urban areas in other states.
We have indicated above some of the Central measures that have seriously curtailed Punjab’s agricultural and industrial growth, In fact, the Reorganization Act has put a permanent ceiling on the economic, social and political development of the state, It is in this context that the demand contained in assurances of the Congress leaders, and the Akali demand of 1949, was revived in 1973 because it became evident that in the existing set-up the economic and social growth of the people of the Punjab stood completely arrested. Hence the need of autonomy in the field of development and administrative subjects, as envisaged in the Anandpur Sahib Resolution, became inevitable.
Evidently it is sheer bias on the part of a scholar to make a complete black-out of the context, the Steps taken by the Center and the Political events in the Punjab and other states that have given rise to the Anandpur Sahib Resolution demanding state autonomy, and approvingly to endorse that Anandpur Sahib Resolution is viewed ‘as a document of secession.’ In the current political thinking both in the world and in India, it looks so incongruous for even a journalist, much less for a scholar to brand a simple demand for autonomy as secessionist. We give below by way of a sample a recent statement of a Central Minister, George Fernandes, who observed at a seminar on “Indian nationalism, Problems and Challenges,” that (17) “The growing militancy by the youth was a clear indication that the politicians had failed to solve the problems of the country. The only answer was to have a new constitution, providing a genuine decentralized state with development activity being the responsibility of the people.” The country had adopted decentralisation instead of going in for centralized planning, there would not have been a single village in the country with a drinking water problem.” The author has unnecessarily and illogically raised the issue of Sikh Personal Law, and tried to relate it to so-called Sikh fundamentalism. First, there is nothing fundamentalist in making a political demand. Second, Sikhs have undoubtedly a separate religion, a separate scripture and a separate socio-political identity and world view. Accordingly, there is nothing abnormal or irrational, if the Sikhs, like the Muslims or the Hindus, want to have a separate personal law; it is the right of every ethnic community to make such a demand. It is just ridiculous for anyone to suggest, as has been done by Oberoi, that after the grant of autonomy the Sikhs would ban tobacco, drugs or alcohol. Nothing of this sort was done by Ranjit Singh even in the nineteenth century. The Punjab Assembly has power even today to ban tobacco or alcohol, but nothing of the kind has happened, although some other states have introduced prohibition. It appears hardly rational to raise such a bogey, It reminds one of the fears expressed by some politicians that hens would stop laying eggs, if the steam locomotive invented by Stephenson were introduced. As explained earlier, the real object of Oberoi appears to be political, and the aim seems to be to misrepresent the justification and political necessity of the demand for state autonomy. For, other~ wise, it is difficult to accept that he is absolutely unaware of the basic importance of water and hydel power, territorial, recruitment and other issues in reference to Punjab and the demand for autonomy in many parts of the country.
Sikh Ideology: Now we shall take up issues concerning fundamentalism. Sikh pluralism, Miripiri concept; Nirankari’s, modernity, secularist and agrarian situation, which Oberoi has irrelevantly introduce in order to sidetrack the main i sues of the Punjab problem.
First we take up the alleged fun damentalism. From the point c view of academic studies the pair is completely irrelevant to the subject under consideration, because fundamentalism is relate only to the literal acceptance to many of the stories and assertion in the Bible, which under modern conditions are not accepted by many. For example, it has bees stated that the world is only a few thousand years old. There i nothing in the Sikh scripture or this Sikh ideology, which appears i any way illogical to modern thought. In fact it is the modernity that is its basic feature and is the reason for its departure from the earlier Indian religions. It is no our intention to give offence t any old religion, but we all know that they have their statement: which are questioned even by men of the faith. Hence, it appear necessary to give the Sikh work view, so that Oberoi’s contentions could be assessed in the correct ideological perspective.
Sikhism is free from any historical or mythical assumptions. It is a monotheistic faith with the belief that the basic Force or God is Love, and He is both transcendent and immanent in His creation. Love being dynamic, the mother of all values, and directive, God deeply interested in His creation and operates through His altruistic Will. As such, the seeker’s goal is to carry out His Will. This makes for the reality of the world, instead of its being an illusion (mithya) of a suffering, as it is considered by some other religions. Hence, Guru Nanak emphasizes four things: First, that in life the spiritual dimension must be combined with the empirical dimension in order to live a full and fruitful life. This forms the basis of the Miripiri doctrine laid down by him. Second, that the ideal of man is not salvation or merger in Brahman, but working in tune with the altrcuistic Will of God. Our present malady is that we live an egoistic life and remain alienated from the real force of Love, that is operatic in the world and forms based all moral life. Third, in pursuance of the above logic Guru Nanak rejected the system of monasticism, asceticism, other worldliness, caste ideology and pollution, and woman being considered a temptress.. No prophet in the world has made such radical changes in religious thought as did Guru Nanak, Fourth, he Prescribed that man’s assessment would Purely but truthful living is higher still.
Article extracted from this publication >> Aug 14, 1992
