Swagata Yadavar
Kuch na honda Punjab da, zameen banjar, aulad kanjar.
(Nothing can come of Punjab–the lands are barren, the children are jobless.)
That extreme assessment of India’s 11th richest state was made by a drug kingpin in a dark, controversial film called Udta Punjab (Flying Punjab). The statistical reality, as IndiaSpend reported on January, 31, 2017, is that Punjab–ground zero of a green revolution that ended India’s image as a land beset by starvation–has failed to grow its economy or prepare its young people for the future. Employment and economic growth lag the national average.
The reality in Punjab–as IndiaSpend found after travelling through the districts of Amritsar, Tarn Taran, two rural and border districts and Ludhiana, an industrial centre–echoed the film and statistical assessment. The desire to leave their villages for better prospects elsewhere was common, and people expressed anger at the rise of drugs, the decline of jobs, and the failure of aspirations. The overriding demand: Change.
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Amritsar, Tarn Taran, Ludhiana: It was cold and overcast at noon, when the clouds parted to allow in weak sunlight and much-needed warmth. We were in the village of Heir, 4 km south of Amritsar airport, where departures to Tashkent, Doha, Dubai and Singapore reflect the flight of the Punjabi from his native land. Along the broken road to the main village square, a group of men, young and middle-aged, sat around talking.
What, we asked, were the crucial issues for the assembly election of February 4, 2017? They answered in unison: Unemployment. “Look at us,” said Amrinder Singh, 34, science graduate, father of two. “It is the middle of the day, and all of us are sitting here whiling our time. There is nothing for us to do here.”
After his graduation, Amrinder–well built, smartly dressed in jeans and sneakers–did find a job at a private company. Dissatisfied with the Rs 15,000 salary, he resigned. Amrinder wanted, as many young Punjabis do, a government job. He applied, unsuccessfully, to be a physical-education teacher and police sub-inspector. “To get selected, one must pay bribe, sometimes upto Rs 20 lakh,” said Singh. “Even then, there is no guarantee that you will get the job.”
Singh’s family does own farm land, but as families expand and farm sizes fall–from 3.9 hectares to 3.7 hectares over five years from 2005-06 to 2010-11, according to 2010-11 Agricultural Census data, the latest available–farming isn’t an option.
“Already, one brother is looking after the farm, what will I do?” asked Singh. Has he considered a business of his own? “Only those who have political backing can start a business,” Singh claimed.
The end result is that Singh has been unemployed for eight years, waiting for that government job.
“It’s not just me,” he argued. “Most of the young men in the village suffer the same fate. That’s why most of us are addicted to alcohol, tobacco or drugs. Three people from our village died of drug overdose in the last two-and-a-half months.”
Punjab’s drug problem is a political issue, with one part of the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal-BJP combine accusing Congress president Rahul Gandhi–who said one in 10 Punjabi youth were now addicts–of “defaming brave Punjabis”. In January 2017, Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal was quoted as saying: “We are trying to save the youth of our country. The image of Punjab should not be tarnished… the Congress called us drug addicts and Rahul Gandhi tarnished the image of Punjabis by calling them so.”
Punjab’s deep and spiralling drug problem
There are nearly 230,000 opioid dependent and 860,000 opioid users in Punjab, according to the 2015 Punjab Opioid Dependence Survey, conducted by researchers from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and Society of Promotion of Youth and Masses, a non-profit working towards prevention of drug abuse.
The survey of 3,620 drug-dependent individuals found that 99% of opioid dependents are male, 54% are married, and 55% are addicted to heroin, a synthetic opioid drug that causes feeling of euphoria and, at Rs 400 a gram, is one of the costliest drugs in the market. While 80% of addicts tried to quit, no more than 35% received professional help. Opioid dependents spent Rs 1,400 per day on drugs or an estimated Rs 7,575 crore statewide every year.
“Drug addiction is more a symptom than a disease,” said Ravinder Singh Sandhu, retired sociology professor from Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar. “Unfortunately, people still treat it as a personal and not a sociological problem.” Sandhu’s 2009 sociological study of 600 drug addicts from urban and rural Punjab found that 73.5% were aged between 16 and 35. Those who were illiterate (40.6%) and with education up to fifth grade (22.3%) were prone to drug addiction in rural areas, while those with a 10th-grade education (44.6%), or more, were susceptible to drugs in urban areas. One in four respondents was unemployed.
“Drug addiction is directly linked with poverty and not with prosperity, as is the belief,” said Sandhu. He implicated the quality of education in Punjab as a reason for the dissonance between what young people aspire to be and what they become.
For instance, while literacy and the general education budget rose over a year to 2016-17, spending on primary education and incentives to retain students in school were cut, leading to a doubling in the primary school dropout rate in one year, we reported on January 31, 2017.
Thousands of semi-educated youth over the years were left unprepared for a job market that has jobs only for the best or, as Amrinder Singh in Heir village contended, for the well-connected. This failure of aspiration adds to the stress that fuels drug use, said Sandhu.
How a post-graduate in English, football player became drug addicts
Harinder (name changed) is 28, a post-graduate in English who could not find a job for four years. He and his friends first tried heroin, he said, because they were “bored”. He was hooked to the drug and soon found he needed a fix first thing in the morning and last thing at night.
Harinder’s family was well-off, and money was never a problem. He did think of quitting, but it did not work. “If you try to quit on your own, the whole system collapses, and the body aches,” he told IndiaSpend at the 250-bed Swami Vivekanand Government Drug Deaddiction and Rehabilitation Centre (one of five such centres in Punjab), where he had checked himself in.
For Kuljeet (name changed), 35–graduate, national-level football player and heroin addict–admitting himself was, as he put it, “the last chance to save my life”. He was once a security officer in Attari and started using opium largely out of curiosity. Kuljeet said he did not know of “side effects”, and when it became scarce, he switched to easily available heroin, which he dissolved in water and injected. He lost his job, and sold his wife’s jewellery. She filed for divorce and his six-year-old son is now in a boarding school.
It’s been five days for Kuljeet at the Centre, and he hoped he could get his life back–what’s left of it.
The role of personal morality and larger economic failures in the drug problem
A psychiatrist (requesting anonymity since the election code of conduct was in force and he isn’t authorised to speak to the media) treating drug addicts at the civil hospital of Tarn Taran, 25 km south of Amritsar city, said he saw up to eight new addicts and up to 30 follow-up cases every day: 80% of the addiction is related to heroin.
“When I started in 2008, most cases were of pharmaceutical drugs, such as morphine, lomotil, tramadol, but now heroin is more common,” he said, identifying the stigma involved as the greatest challenge in treatment. “Most people still see drug addiction as a moral failure,” he said. “In fact, it’s a chronic relapsing psychiatric illness with biological, social and psychological causes.”
There are larger economic failures that drive the drug problem in the border districts, which are especially vulnerable to drugs and report higher rates of addiction than inland areas.
“If the border districts were offered better health, education and employment facilities, they would not be tempted to smuggle drugs,” said J S Oberoi, a deputy inspector general with the Border Security Force, which guards the border with Pakistan. Many farmers with holdings between two and three acres, he said, work as drug-runners for as little as Rs 10,000 per run.
Caught between farms and city, dreams and reality, many Punjabis at a dead end
It is the pea-harvesting season and Kashmir Singh, 53, his family, and 30 other labourers are bending low to pick peas. We are in Amritsar’s Pindiyan village, 50 km from the industrial town of Jalandhar and 40 km from the Pakistani border.
“Usually, we have less than five months of work every year,” said Kashmir. During other months, he tries to get work as a casual worker in other villages or the nearby town. Since he earns less than Rs 60,000 a year and has no land, he is eligible for a government-issued “blue card”, the other requirement for which, in rural areas, is that you have less than 2.5 acres of land–it is also given to those with less than 100 sq. yards of land in urban areas.
But Kashmir hasn’t got his blue card, more than a year after applying.
Blue card holders also get atta or wheat at Rs 2 per kg and dal or pulses at Rs 30 per kg. He hasn’t heard of the 100 days of employment guaranteed by the 12-year-old Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee (MGNREGA) Act. “We don’t have any such card,” he said.
Others around Kashmir knew of MGNREGA but alleged that most cards were held by village panchayat office workers, who siphoned off government payments, a common-enough problem with the world’s largest rural jobs programme, IndiaSpend reported in February 2016.
Kashmir’s son, Daljeet, 30, works alongside his wife and children. He is a 10th-class pass, and so is his wife. They would prefer working in a factory, but most factories around the area closed down some years ago. He has considered migrating to a city, but there isn’t land they can sell to buy a house and renting is expensive. So, they are stuck in Pindiyan, with no job opportunities and no way of realising their hopes of a better life for their children.
(Yadavar is principal correspondent with IndiaSpend.)
