By Dr. Sawraj Singh
Delhi and Punjab are geographically very close. Ambala is located at the border of Punjab and Haryana. Haryana which used to be a part of Punjab now separates Delhi from Punjab. From Ambala Delhi is about 200 kilo meters. It is about three hours by car. High speed trains take two to two and half hours. I am on the Guest Faculty of the Short Term Course on Guru Granth Sahib which is given in Delhi. Therefore, I have to frequently go to Delhi. Ambala Cantt Railway Station is less than an hour by car from our house in Patiala and the Shatabadi (fast) train takes a little more than two hours to Delhi. In spite of the physical closeness, there seems to a big difference in the thinking and attitude of people.
I just met a young man from Patiala who finished his law degree from Delhi University. We talked extensively about his experiences in Delhi. I found him very different than the young men in Punjab. The young men in Punjab mostly feel that they have no future in Punjab and their future can only be bright if they migrate to a foreign country, particularly to Canada. However, this boy feels that his future is very bright in Delhi and he will never go to Canada. He feels that there is a lot of work in Delhi for him and if he works hard and with dedication then he can earn a lot of money and can live very comfortably and will have a lot of prestige. Such a life will be much better than life in Canada. He feels that in Canada we have a very little chance of getting a job which is compatible with our qualification and ability. We have to mostly settle for the leftovers. By leftover he means the menial and less desirable jobs which the local people do not want to do.
He feels that there are plenty of jobs in the Delhi area (Gurgaon and Noida etc) which offer very high salaries, status and prestige and many fringe benefits. A big majority of students migrating to Canada will end up in doing jobs which are far below their qualification and ability and these jobs lack all the three elements mentioned above. He said that many leaders of the political parties in Punjab are taking full advantage of the opportunities in Delhi. Some even have their primary residence in Delhi but many have a second home in Delhi. The price of these houses is even beyond the imagination of the Punjabis in Canada who consider their couple of million dollar houses as very expensive.
This is exactly same point which was made by Raunak Singh, a very well known businessman from Delhi. He had invited us for a lunch at his residence in the Friend’s Colony, a very expensive area of Delhi, more than 20 years ago. He said that a Punjabi in the Vancouver area invited him to his big farm house. He said that when I asked the host that what was the price of the house the owner replied that it was very expensive. He said that the price was about a million Canadian dollars. At that time converting to the Indian rupees it was about two crores. Raunak Singh said that he felt like laughing at this because just the land price of his house in Delhi was about 100 crores.
The student also told me that most of these good jobs in the Delhi are taken by the people from Bihar and the U P. Very few Punjabis apply for these jobs. He said that the political leaders in Punjab who are availing the opportunities in Delhi do not pass on this information to the youth in Punjab and in a way are encouraging the youth to migrate to Canada.
We can compare this student from Delhi to a student in Punjab and see a very big difference. This student just finished ten plus two (High school) and passed the IELTS exam. He is the only child of very highly qualified doctors in a very high income group. The parents provided him with everything he asked for. For example, his mobile phone is top of the line with the cost of about one lakh rupees. However, in spite of being raised like a prince he feels that his future is better in Canada and he is migrating to Canada.
The student from Delhi gave another example of a big difference in Punjab and Delhi. One of his relatives in Delhi started liking a Hindu Bania girl. He told his parents that he wanted to marry the girl. The parents said that the girl should be a Sikh. When he told the girl this she became an Amritdhari Sikh and they got married. We can compare this to Punjab where most of the Sikh girls, particularly the Jatt Sikh, now only want to marry clean shaven boys. A very well known writer who lives in the Chandigarh area told me that she used to live in the Mumbai area and her family lives all over India. She is the first in her family to move to Punjab. She also told me that nobody in her family ever became clean shaven. However, as soon as she moved to Punjab both her sons became clean shaven. A class mate and a friend of mine who retired as the Principal of the Government Medical College Patiala and is a Jatt Sikh himself, told me that he felt bad when he saw that most of the girls did not like the boys in the Sikh form.
A big tragedy is that many Punjabi intellectuals feel that the present crisis in Punjab is purely an economic crisis. However, the reality is that the crisis is multidimensional. There are cultural, social and ethical components besides the economic component. I feel that a comparison of Delhi and Punjab can help us understand the different aspects of the crisis.
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].
