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OK fine, We've messed it up. Now, will you
lend a hand?
Excerpted from an
article featured in the WSN Special Edition Dedicated to Punjabi NRI
Sammelan which was released at the NRP conclave, this despatch
focusses on the poor state of affairs in the core areas of
education and health and pleads for a meaningful engagement between
the motherland and her sons who went abroad and did well, and came
home to see the old mother with its wrinkled face. -- Ed
 One
of the things the Diaspora, particularly the NRPs, can teach the
Punjab folk is the stress the developed societies lay on the core
areas of health and education, exactly the domains that lie crumbled
in the motherland today and are a source of major worry for the
government. Notwithstanding the romantic notion that India has a
government-backed hospital and dispensaries chain, the country now
has the sixth most privatized healthcare system in the world . With
average farm income monthly spends hovering at Rs 503, just above
the below-poverty-line, you can well imagine how accessible is the
healthcare for people in an agrarian economy like Punjab.
Eight teachers retire everyday in Punjab. Quick maths: 240 in a
month, nearly 3,000 in a year. For seven years in a row, the
government chooses not to recruit a single teacher. Schools without
roofs, schools without principals, schools without blackboards or
classrooms stopped becoming a media story long back. Now schools
without a single teacher also don’t find a mention.
There is this thought that the market has a solution to everything.
But leaving our children’s classrooms and our health to the market
could be suicidal.
Resource-crunched regimes have a bad habit of mismanaging limited
funds because a crunch often limits the ability and the inclination
to go in for a long term plan. Just as Keynes said that in the long
run we are all dead, the politician very well knows that a policy
that will bear fruits on a long term basis wouldn’t bring votes in
five years. The NRPs who have gathered here have no agenda of
winning electoral benefits. Punjab is keenly looking at these sons
of the homeland to bring some succour.
Punjabis who are worried about the dismal state of education in the
state are shocked at the entry of resident non-Punjabis. The field
is fertile territory for all those who are determined either to saffronise the edu-structure or those who see potential to make big
money.
 With 62 percent of Punjabi children virtually out of primary
schools, the once respectable position of the state is in doldrums.
Everyone passes as no one wants anyone to fail. Unfortunately,
tethering on illiteracy, society as a whole couldn’t care less.
Another thing that the NRPs must address and engage with is a rather
subtle menace dividing our society. The education system has become
an instrument of social stratification, rather than that of
cohesiveness. We must seriously think through the implications of
some schools being more Adarsh than others. These will no doubt be
better schools, but the state needs more than short cuts.
All
Punjabis want to come to Punjab, buy a house, a car and all the
luxuries that life offers. All of you are happy at the pace of
development in Punjab. You can see reasonably good roads, the
Amritsar Airport is nearly working, and more and better-looking cars
are available if you have the dough, marriages are digitally
advanced, malls and markets are eye-catching, the Mcdonna’ induces
familiarity and you feel at “home”.
But
health and education in Des Punjab is on the threshold of
brinkmanship. If you listen to the slate, the blackboard may arrive
and if you care for the chalk, the books may follow. What must a
hospital have? Doctors and medicines. We don’t have them. Can you
administer a shot? Little tablets just don’t work anymore. The
disease is much serious than when you left.
Every non-resident meet hovers around money. The government wants
money. It needs it. Indigenous development models cannot be
prepared without big time money. The NRI is willing to donate.
Some are willing to invest. There are others who want a say in the
governance of the state, and for good reasons.
Adopt the primary school in your home village as you would adopt a
child. Set up a team to take care of all its needs. The poorest of
the poor go to these schools and they need almost everything: school
books, uniform, proper teaching tools, a library, a laboratory and
basic sanitation facilities. Oh, a teacher too. We need them in
schools, while they spend time in fending off lathi charges.
Set
up scholarship schemes for students of your village, teams of
conscientious individuals who will not allow the school staff to
stay idle and put them through a reward scheme based on results,
adopt bright students and set up online contact with them to ensure
that they are given the best facilities, set up a library and
reading a room in your village.
 We
have spent the last fifty years doing Kar Sewa — some right and
quiet a bit wrong. The next fifty years should be spent on Gyan Sewa.
Non-resident participation in elections in Punjab has added a new
but dangerous dimension to the polity in Punjab. Instead of
bringing the best of democratic working to Punjab from where they
come, the millionaire politicians are part of the liquor-money
racket that dominates the electoral scene. These guys who do such
politics here with their dollars and pounds must be dealt with and
countered by those who too have dollars and pounds, and a conscience
thrown in.
And if you get a few minutes off this NRP conclave,
we plead for a social and cultural audit amongst the Non-Resident
Punjabis. Now that you are here, Maavan
Dhiyan Da Lekha Jokha Ho Hee Jaave!
9 January 2008
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