All At Sea!

"This was taken at Al Seef in Dubai, and I think I would have liked the shot anyway, but the fact that they're all standing on one leg meant that this was a shot I couldn't resist."

-David J. Nightingale
http://www.chromasia.com/

Xenophibic Punjabis versus rioting migrants

An eyewitness account of the happenings in Ludhiana on Friday, December 4 as migrants went on rampage and police assisted by locals retaliated with vengeance. The spine-chilling violence unleashed by the police aided by locals went entirely unreported in the mainstream media. Here is what I saw...

We were told migrant labourers, pejoratively called Bhaiyas here, were rioting in the industrial area in Focal Point.

At around 11.30 we reached there.

A burnt car at the Dhandari flyover and some buses and trucks smouldering with dying out fire further up, stood out as burning testimonies of what had gone there earlier in the morning. Stones lay splattered all around.

It was supposed to be a curfew clamped there. But people roamed around openly wielding lathis, axes and swords. The migrants who were supposed to be the riotous mobs were on the other side of the railway track in the thickly populated Dhandari Khurd area.

The bhaiyas were in attacking mode and local populace was holding them up, we were told.

We soon learnt what was actually going on.

It was plain and simple xenophobia manifesting itself in its ugliest form.

It was started by migrant labourers but they didn’t know what they had bargained for.

Local youth from nearby areas, with police backing them up in background, unleashed a fury, repercussions of which would be felt for long time to come.

Cornered in the village, the unarmed labourers in substantial numbers, came from different sides to pelt stones. The policemen including the officers were the first ones to run. The armed locals withstood the onslaught and retaliated. They picked those they could lay their hands upon, raining blows and lathis mercilessly. Police took over after that. Continuing with the thrashing they dragged the bleeding labourers piling them up in their vehicles.

As the beating continued media was threatened openly not to shoot or click pictures. Media, incidentally, was more than obliging.

By evening the outnumbered and outmaneuvered migrants had retreated into background.

-Jatinder Preet

What kind of government is this?

Here is a strange spectacle of a state finance minister telling people in media interviews about what needs to be done to revive state economy but pleads helplessness in doing it.

“Yes. I am not having my way (...as Finance Minister)” he said explicitly in the interview to Ramesh Vinayak in Hindustan Times.

But what the hell is he doing in the ministry then?

The interviewer asked him that a bit more politely. “Why not opt out of the government in which you have no say?”

“I don't know if that will serve any purpose,” he responded as he carried on:

• We are short of 32,000 school teachers. (don't have Rs 300 crore to pay their salary for a year)
• Spending Rs 4,600 crore a year on subsidies
• A farmer is getting power for six to eight hours a day. He ends up spending Rs 2,400 a month on running a diesel pumpset.
• Village school has no teacher and hospital has no medicine or doctor because we have no money for that.

Besides these figures reeled out by the Finmin himself here are some more to ponder:

• 89% of farmers in state are under heavy debt.
• In the period 2000-08, there were 2890 suicides in Sangrur andBathinda (1757 farmers and 1133 agricultural labourers)
• Mandi Gobindgarh followed by Ludhiana are the most polluted cities in the country
• Subsoil water of 108 blocks has been declared grey
• Punjab farmers use 184 kg/ha of chemical fertilizers
• State Infant mortality rate is 42 per 1000 live births
• high prevalence of anemia among children between 6-35 months - 80.2% and pregnant women -41.6%
• Sex ratio of only 874 (in 2001, the state ranked 27^th among the 28 states of India)
• Ranks 16th in terms of literacy among Indian States and Union Territories
• Out of 100 children enrolled in class I, only 22 reach senior secondary level

So what do you do?

Admire the minister for his “plain-speak”?

Or, ask him to get working?

A Dalit's Car

A car parked outside Indus Groceries in Berkeley, USA, on June 25, 2009, according to Insight Young Voices Blog, a dalit youth magazine, from which this picture was taken. It is credited to Prof Shiva Shankar who forwarded this photo clicked by SK Dutt.

Password

After a long wait, Shameel has come up with new poetry book O Miyan, being hailed as watershed book as far as the growth of new Punjabi poetry is concerned. Though Punjabi poetry started showing new trends of thought and expression in the early years of this century, this is the first book which clearly defines the new face of Punjabi poetry. This is poetry of cosmic consciousness, different colours of divine love, philosophical questions and quest for beyond written in a refreshingly contemporary idiom. Here is one of his poems translated by Jatinder Preet

He sends every Being

With a locked heart

And leaves it's password

With someone, only One

And then

He gets them to play a game

People call it love.

One whose password is found

Is liberated

Rest keep wandering
Keep on taking births
To find their passwords

You can listen to the footsteps

Of the One, who has your password
From afar

Thousands of colourful birds
In the universe of body
Start chirping
When you come to know of his arrival

Before he arrives
His invisible being comes to you
That can be seen by birds

That One
Remains with you forever
Like spirit in body
Like sweetness in words
Like moisture in eyes

This One has mathematics of its own
Your One added with it
Doesn’t make it Two
Like zero added to a zero
Infinite with infinite

This One
Is never lost
Lives forever
Like a memory in mind
Like relaxation in the body
Like mother tongue in your voice
Like the grind of breath