By Dr. Sawraj Singh
Exodus of educated youth from Punjab has reached such a level that if unchecked it can have disastrous consequences for Punjab and the Punjabis. Last year about 400,000 young people took the IELTS test. This number is only going to increase. Almost everybody, including the Government, seems convinced that there is no future for the educated youth in the state and the only option left for them is to migrate to foreign countries. There is even some talk about the Punjabi University Patiala starting a course to coach for the IELTS test. This can mean that not only the Government is not concerned about the Brain Drain but may actually be helping it. One can go to any corner of the state and find advertisement for preparing you for the IELTS test.
We were recently in Bihar. Like many Punjabis we had an impression that Bihar is a poor and backward state from which many poor and unemployed people come to Punjab to seek menial jobs. However, after visiting Bihar we completely changed our opinion about Bihar. In Patna, which is bigger than any city in Punjab and which is one of the fastest growing cities in India has real estate more expensive than Chandigarh, we did not see a single advertisement for the IELTS test. Instead of that we saw advertisement for training you for the IAS test. These ads claimed that we have trained more students for the IAS test than any other institution in India.
I just saw a program on an American TV channel which showed that many American corporations have their recruiters in Mumbai to recruit students of the IIT Mumbai for their Executive positions. They prefer graduates of this institution for their highest executive positions. It was also shown that competition to get admitted in the IIT Mumbai is the toughest in the world and those students who applied and did not get selected can easily get admission in the top most institutions of America such as the Harvard University.
Compared to these states level of education in Punjab is very low. Many students, particularly the male students have great difficulty in passing a relatively simple test like the IELTS. A vast majority of the students who are migrating to countries like Canada will never get any decent or higher education. Most of them will end up doing low level menial jobs which require very little education. Even worse, many adopt a life of crime .The boys will join gangs, be recruited by Drug pushers or be associated with human trafficking. For quite a significant number of girls the age old profession of prostitution is waiting with open arms.
Most popular jobs which most of these students will end up doing are; Tuck driving, Taxi driving, working in a gas station (petrol pump), pizza delivery and cleaning jobs etc. Most of the local people do not want to do these jobs. For example, I saw a report on an American TV channel which showed that there are about one and half million truck driving jobs in America. The report said that no American wants to become a truck driver. The report said that there is one community which wants these jobs, the Sikhs. According to this report there are 30,000 Sikh truck drivers in America and one day most of the truck drivers in America will be Sikhs.
Compared to these low prestige and low paying jobs which most of Punjabis will end up doing, the other Indians, particularly the south Indians, are doing highly qualified and prestigious jobs. A practicing gynecologist told me that she has noticed a big difference between the Punjabi and the South Indian patients. Most of the Punjabi patients do not speak good English, do not understand their condition and instructions and they and their husbands are doing less prestigious jobs. Compared to this, most of the South Indian patients are very well educated and very well informed, speak very good English and they or their husbands are mostly doing highly qualified and prestigious jobs.
A few years ago 20 top Indian scientists were honored in America. Out of these 19 were South Indians. I came to America in the early seventies. At that time there was not much difference between the Punjabis and the South Indians. All were mostly professionals. We should also remember that Hargobind Khurana who got Nobel Prize in Physics was a Punjabi.
It is not only in the foreign countries that a large number of Punjabis are becoming an under- class, even in Punjab higher education is being very adversely affected by this massive brain drain. The Universities and colleges are having a great difficulty in filling their seats. In the Punjabi University Patiala where there used to be very tough completion for admission in many courses, now the University has hard time even filling all the seats. Similarly a college in Faridkot used to get on the average four applicants for one seat, now the college could only fill 70% seats. This situation is likely to get worse in the coming years. This state of affairs is bound to very adversely affect higher education in Punjab.
Many of the students who are taking IELTS test and are leaving Punjab are of middle class back ground. These are being replaced by non Punjabis who are of poor and culturally backward background. Punjab is not only undergoing ethnic exchange of the population, its population is also being declassed. If these trends are not reversed, which seems very unlikely, the long term results can be disastrous for Punjab. The land which used to be the center of knowledge is going to seriously fall behind in the fields of education and knowledge. The land in which Vedas were written, first University in the world was established, the Zenith of spirituality and philosophy was reached in the form of Sri Guru Granth Sahib and where a fully enlightened person in the form of Khalsa was created, can become an intellectually deprived and relatively poor and backward region, that too if it survives the impending ecological disaster.
Dr. Sawraj Singh, MD F.I.C.S. is the Chairman of the Washington State Network for Human Rights and Chairman of the Central Washington Coalition for Social Justice. He can be reached at [email protected].
