Issue 7 Vol I, January 15, 2006

editorial

Odds and Ends

SOME years back Lajpat Rai, an 89 year old non resident Indian, who had worked hard in California and made good money thought of a noble gesture to give something back to his country, most precisely to his village Bajwar, close to Hoshiarpur. The result was Sarvanand Giri Institute of Information and Technology at a cost of Rs 11 crore. No small effort and no small money.

But this magnanimous gesture has taken a sad turn now. Lajpat Rai has written to Panjab University at Chandigarh to take over the Institute and manage it.  Reason; he can not put up with corruption and grease the palms of all and sundry and who behave as rascals. “They think I am some dacoit from California who has money to squander on these thugs.” a desolate lajpat Rai tells whosoever listens. His only condition is that the University must manage it for the poor and merited students and also maintain the hospital he has setup. He would provide Rs 12 lakhs annually for the hospital and rest, the land and the infra structure would belong to the University. “I find no other way to fight the corrupt and greedy”, He says.

Take another instance. In Chandigarh on January 6, a dozen Youngman from Punjab narrated their woeful tales of their exploitation in Iraq. They were recruited as drivers by travel agents and made to do menial work for months. “We ware menial workers, cleaning toilets of the American army and other security men. We were often beaten and denied basic needs. We had signed contracts to work as truck drivers. The agents cheated us, pushed us to hot bed of war and nothing to fend for. The job was to clean toilets, wash clothes and do run other dirty errands. At least 250 Punjabis were working there in Iraq.” Suukhvinder Singh sobbed as he told his pathetic story.  And to quote former Indian Minister Balwant singh Ramoowalia, “Punjabi youth are languishing in jails or being compelled to do menial work in 16 countries. Government was doing nothing. It is only happy at the amount of dollars they send home to the poor relatives.” The number is indeed large in Russia, other European countries and West Asia.

These are just two reports picked up in a week’s time from Punjab alone.  The number could be much more if we recount the humiliation, cheating, rapes and all sorts of heinous crime that the NRIs suffer when they visit their motherland or when they go out to work in foreign lands. How do the official agencies treat them when they land in India or when they go about visiting places?  How do we treat well meaning philanthropic Indians for whom the Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh along with eight chief ministers from different states organised a big jamboree at Hyderabad early this month? Some NRIs were honoured, even those with dubious credentials.

What we forget at such gala occasions is the harsh reality that India is a badly governed country and one of the most corrupt in the world. Its dismal poverty, lack of basic needs like food, water, health care or paucity of job opportunities make it a hopeless case for being called a civilised country. But we must talk about being Super Power.  Non resident Indians who have now been granted some status in terms of  dual citizenship and perhaps voting rights to those in the gulf, remitted last year some $20 billion.  They do deserve better than what these two cases point out?