Steps to step Sikh migration

By Mohan Singh Kalla

When Sikhs were massacred at Chittisinghpora Home Minister Govt of India, Chief Minister of J&K and Chief Minister of Punjab and other public figures reached there and assured the Sikhs that their lives and properties will be protected, discrimination against the Sikh Community will be looked into & removed and other problems being faced by the Sikhs will be identified. Apart from this, Political parties of Kashmir and majority Community gave assurance to the Sikhs for their safety and security. In fact this mattered a lot to the Sikhs. Even Pakistan Govt and Militant organisations vehemently denied their involvement in the killings, Sikhs in the Valley watched and waited that the assurances given to them will be implemented by the Central & State Govts. No machinery was set up to fulfill the promises given to the Sikhs. State and Central Govts. tactfully avoided to appoint a Commission of inquiry to probe into the killing at Chittisinghpora for the reason best known to them.

Within a span of about ten months Sikhs have been targeted again & selected killings of seven Sikhs by one Militant Organisation, Al Qasim, has been committed. This time Sikhs have blamed the State Govt local administration and local print media for this happening. Now the Sikhs in Kashmir find themselves more in-secure and feel that planned cleansing of the Sikhs may be in the offing. If it happens than it will have far reaching consequences in J&K and in India affecting cordial relations, weakening of secularism in India. This will help Pakistan in achieving its aim. This will be more harmful and unfortunate for then Sikhs and Muslims living in Jammu & Kashmir or in the Punjab. Let Muslims in Kashmir treat Sikhs living in Kashmir as their sacred trust and Sikhs of Jammu and Punjab treat Muslims living in Jammu and in the Punjab as their brethren and sacred trust. They should make every efforts to strength communal harmony.

It is in the larger interests of both the communities in the country to live in harmony and defeat communal and other elements which want to create wedge in their existing relations.

For this purpose Muslims of Kashmir, Govt, Sikhs and others have to work for confidence building measures in Kashmir to instill confidence among the Sikhs living there.

Majority community in Kashmir has to play a role of elder brother. They should create congenial atmosphere, look after the interests of the Sikhs and let them feel that they are safe and secure. Security of minorities has been the responsibility of the majority community. It holds good in Kashmir inspite of the militancy and other related factors. What Sikhs need in Kashmir is that their business, property, services and religious places are protected; they have freedom in their religious performances the day to day problems are solved. Political and religious leaders and prominent Muslims should interact with them; village & Mohalla committees should interact with them; village & Mohalla committees consisting of prominent Muslims and Sikhs should be formed to remove misunderstandings & to solve their problems. Apart from this their day to day dealings with Sikhs and in providing jobs to them in their business establishments matters a lot. Kashmiri Muslims are known for their tolerance and love for peace. They are humane at heart; they are God fearing people and share grief and pleasures with thier neighbours. In fact, they are true followers of great teachings of Islam and are guided by the philosophy of suffism in their day to day life.

Role of politicians and political leaders has assumed significance in confidence building measures. Masses are guided and swayed by their utterances, they look to them for guidance Communal approach by these leaders, in political and other issues, can do maximum harm. They should deal with the present problems with maximum care and caution, as they have done in the past, maintain communal harmony at all costs.

We appreciate the role played by the Hurriyat leaders and others in sharing the grief of the Sikh community and in maintaining traditional communal harmony in Kashmir.

Connected with this is the role of the print media Kashmiri generally, keep themselves posted with day to day happenings through electronic and print media. In Kashmir Print-media can play constructive role by positive reporting, comments and writings in the larger interest of country and in maintaining communal harmony.

It will not be out of place to mention that administration was not alive in handling the situation in Kashmir in the Ist Week of Feb, 2001, which resulted in this unfortunate happenings. Intelligence agencies failed in timely reporting about the role of some elements working against existing cordial relations among Muslims and Sikhs. After 'un-called for' reporting by the print media in Kashmir, sentiments of one Community were aroused which resulted in killings of the Sikhs at Mehjoor-Nagar. Local Administration failed to handle the situation.

Govt has to play major role in confidence building measures to check migration of the Sikhs from Kashmir. The first step it should take is with regard to providing security. Security measures should not be on the lines of VDC. It will give wrong signals and Sikhs may become targets of the militants.

It is not acceptable to the Sikhs, as we have enemity with none. Sikhs are not satisfied with the present arrangements of providing 4-5 cops in every village. Let the Central and State Govts think in consultations with the Sikhs, how best security arrangements can be made to provide required security without causing suspicion in the minds of Majority Community. Even providing arms to the able-bodied Sikhs will be counter-productive and against the interest of the Sikhs. There is need for further healing touch by the Govt. after giving first healing touch i.e. conducting one Sikh as Cabinet Minister.

Earlier there were two MLAs and two MLC's one each from Kashmir Province and Jammu Province when there were 75 seats in the Assembly. Now the seats have been increased upto 87, there is need to have 3 MLAs and 3 MLCs from both the provinces. For this purpose Govt needs to amend the constitution in such a way that the Sikhs are elected without much difficulty because of their being in minority. For this purpose, constituencies should be delimited in such a way that Sikhs living in the constituencies are in a majority. Govt should consider nomination of 3 MLCs to the Legislative Council.

Govt should appoint commission of inquiry into the killings at Chittisinghpora and Mehjoor Nagar. It should also publish Ansari Commission report. To safeguard the interest of the Sikhs a minority commission may be constituted.

Apart from this, Sikhs may be given due share in the State services and those who are in Service should be posted at suitable places and not in far flung areas. In Kashmir Valley, they should be posted in City and Towns, because of security reasons. There is a feeling that Sikhs are being discriminated against in making fresh appointments, postings and allotting seats in the professional colleges. They have no representation in the statutory bodies, Sikhs living in Kashmir have greater responsibility.

They should, as they have done in the past, remain neutral and work for communal harmony. That is the right approach. They should follow the teachings of great Gurus of one-ness of God and brotherhood of man. For true Sikh there is enemity against none.

In the Gurbani it is exhorted; Nako Beri Nahen Begana, Sagal Sang Ham Ko Ban Ai Awal Alah Noor Upaya Qudarat Ke Sab Bandey. Guru Gobind Singh Ji in Akal Ustat says that : The temple and Mosque, Pooja and Namaz, Puran and Quran are the same. All Men are alike, creation of one Almighty.

Let all of us make concerted efforts to maintain communal harmony, follow teachings of Islam and great Gurus.

The mounting suffering for the poor

By J. D. Sethi

You have only to step out of the national Capital to see the signs of impending crisis which the nation faces. The swathes of golden-yellow mustard that greeted the eye in winter are shrinking; the village oil presses are rusting. These are the new victims of the World Trade Organisation.

Farmers are unable to compete with shiploads of cheaper palm oil that our negotiators have committed India to import. They are among the two-thirds of our people depending on agriculture for survival. For them, the future looks bleaker than ever.

This is because mustard is not the only victim of imported palm oil. Coconut prices have crashed in Kerala. Elsewhere, cotton farmers are selling their tractors. Orange and apply orchards show signs of neglect. They too fear foreign competition.

In the south, the prices of groundnet, wheat, paddy, rubber, sugarcane and other agricultural products have fallen. Small farmers have been driven to destitution; the number of suicides is rising. You need not be an astrologer to predict that 2001 will be a year of mounting suffering and unrest.

Commitments made hastily five years ago during the WTO negotiations, and earlier for the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), have brought to a head the mismatch between official, upper class attitudes towards economic development and those of the millions who remain hungry, unsheltered and uneducated, with no reserves to fall back on and no education to find alternative livelihoods.

The Vajpayee Government may not have been responsible for the WTO commitments, but has done little to modify its terms and mitigate the impact. State Governments are under pressure, including those allied to the ruling coalition.

One prominent ally, Parkash Singh Badal, Chief Minister of Punjab, which is India's granary, told a recent agricultural conference: "WTO is the death warrant of the farmer. They say that the farmer will face problems for the first couple of years and then it will be all right. But my question is how will a poor farmer survive those two years? If WTO comes we shall all be beggars. How does the Union Government expect a farmer with a 10-acre farm to compete with people in the US who do their farming with huge government subsidy on stretches up to 100 acres ?"

Among others, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu is among those charging the Centre with making inadequate preparations for the looming disaster. Several other states are feeling the pressure from the grassroots.

In the early Nineties, when prices of agricultural goods abroad were high, our negotiators were persuaded by their Western counterparts that India would do well if exports were freed, which they did for some time. But if they had done their homework, the negotiators would have known that the price cycle was bound to fall, blunting India's competitive edge. Worse happened, foreign prices fell well below ours, and this after New Delhi signed away the right to impose quantitative import restrictions and subsidise export prices. The consequences were disastrous.

Since few Indian farmers enjoy the huge hidden subsidies and substantial bank balances that they do in developed countries, the surge of foreign imports has spelt ruin for them. Experts believe that Western negotiators managed to devise formulas to exempt research, development, transport, non-production and other subsidies given to their minuscule farm communities from WTO penalties. These ensure that their products maintain an edge in free market conditions.

The stakes are critically higher for India than any other country. Its condition is unique, with as many as 700 million people dependent on agriculture, most of them below the poverty line. The slightest fall in agricultural income means near starvation, as we are finding in many states. Yet, our negotiators were persuaded to abolish not only import restrictions but price subsidies as well. In plain words, our negotiators gambled the future of the multi-million agricultural community for a rise in exports, and lost.

Those who have studied India's economy are not surprised with such little concern for the agriculture sector. It goes back 50 years to the 'trickle down' thesis of the Nehru era. It was then conveniently assumed that though the affluent would be the main beneficiaries of the policy of focusing investment in industry, the fruits would eventually trickle down. In fact, less and less trickled through and social differences widened. Mass education too was neglected, depriving the poor, most of them in rural India, of the ability to organise and press their cause.

Agriculture was neglected by the media as well, together with its association with poverty. In Hunger and Public Action, Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze make the point that "starvation deaths and extreme deprivation are newsworthy in a way that quiet persistence of regular hunger and non-extreme deprivation are not. To bring endemic deprivation into the fold of news reporting and to make it a major focus of political confrontation are inherently more difficult tasks, and seem to have been largely beyond the normal activities of journalists and politicians in India. That situation can change and this is clearly a field in which there is scope for the public to play a creative role."

With few exceptions, newspapers have shown the same inability to draw advance attention to the mounting problems of the agricultural sector, and to prepare for them. Television, however, has occasionally helped to heighten awareness.

The Star TV visuals of a woman dying of starvation in the Bolangir district of Orissa because she gave all the food she had to her three children given reality to words like hunger and deprivation. The bereft expressions on the faces of the aged and infirm, left to starvation after the young and able-bodied were forced to leave the village in search of work, provided a searing glimpse of the conditions in which millions subsist.

Yet, in this same country, 40,000 tonnes of foodgrains are spilling out of Government warehouses, much of it rotting and being eaten away by rats. The Food Corporation of India is thinking of dumping the foodgrains into the sea, adding to the crores already wasted.

If distributed in time, a small percentage of the grains and money lost would have saved millions from malnutrition. By the time the Prime Minister's belated birthday promise of wheat and rice at subsidised prices for 10 million poor families is implemented, more will die.

There is no reason to believe that stocks officially designed for the poorest of the poor will not be diverted to the rich, as has happened before. Public distribution is an essential element of the 'safety net' proposed for WTO's victims, but experience has taught that perhaps 15 paise in every rupee of funds meant for them reach the poor. The rest is diverted.

Callous indifference towards the plight of the poor and socially deprived seems to have become the hallmark of the emerging middle class which sets the targets and values of the Government and senior bureaucracy. Increasing the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has become a mantra, though the increase may be monopolised by a few.

Hence, the poor and under-privileged are caught in a cruel pincer. While illiteracy prevents them from exploiting global access to technology, corruption punctures arrangements to cushion the impact of global free trade. These crippling handicaps must be removed before we can hope to benefit from WTO. INAV