After such a huge victory, there was bound to be a rain of announcements. Soon after taking oath as the Chief Minister of Punjab, Bhagwant Mann has announced to give government jobs to 25,000 youth. It is possible that there will be some more such announcements in the coming times. Punjab is at present among those states of the country, where unemployment rate is highest and employment opportunities are lowest. The Punjab in which once a large number of unemployed villagers from Eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar used to reach on the roofs of trains, today has no future to give to its youth. Therefore, even if half a dozen such announcements are made, the unemployment problem of Punjab is not going to be solved. Although, more or less this problem is in almost all the states, but in Punjab it has become much deeper.
Punjab has achieved nothing except losing its sheen in the last four decades. Remember Punjab immediately after the Green Revolution, it was the happiest state in the country. The golden crops ripe in its swaying fields and the pictures of Punjabi youth doing bhangra on tractors were shown to all as examples of the progress of the country. It was said to be the most progressive state of the country. All the states were advised that if you want to move forward, then be like Punjab. People used to say that very soon Punjab would no longer be a part of the third world economically. Then it was ranked at the top of the whole country in terms of average income per capita.
In comparison, if we look at the latest figures, then this first place of Punjab has gradually slipped down to the 19th number. Even Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, the two states that separated from Punjab, have come a long way in this list. The state which once seemed to be moving towards freedom from the curse of the third world, today in terms of per capita income, it stands at par with countries like Nigeria and Laos. At that time, Punjab was the story of making a leap of progress, now the same Punjab is becoming a story of falling backward in the trough.
Being agrarian once used to be the biggest strength of Punjab, today agriculture is narrowing its prospects. Farming would have been a great job in the time of the great poet, but now it has become a loss-making deal for the farmers. On the other hand, it gives a different kind of complexity to the economy of the state. Today, if any state of the country is completely based on agriculture, then it is bound to go down in the race for progress. If you look at the last one-and-a-half-two decades, the growth rate of agriculture has been from zero to four per cent. On average, it is considered to be around two per cent. When the rest of the state is registering a growth rate of six-seven to ten per cent, then becoming completely dependent on the business of two per cent of a state ensures its backwardness.
Looking at the economic condition of the whole country, in the last four decades, there have been two big occasions when some states have embraced the new opportunity and achieved great economic achievement. The first occasion was the advent of information technology ie IT-related industries. The second occasion was economic liberalization, when a large number of industries were set up across the country and the growth rate jumped very fast. The states which managed to take advantage of both these opportunities, we see today in the upper echelons of economic development. Punjab lost both the chances.
The reasons for this are attributed to many. One, the focus of politics was on farmers’ votes, which could be won with free electricity and cheap fertilizers, etc. After this, the arrival of new industries was neither in anyone’s priority nor in anyone’s commitment. No one had the foresight nor felt the need of how the kingdom of prosperous farms and barns could be taken to the next stage of prosperity.
The second reason is probably much bigger. At the time when both these opportunities were available to the country, Punjab was grappling with different kinds of problems. That was the period of terrorism in Punjab. At that time, the common people were hesitant to go there, so what would the investors go for. What’s more, industrialists from Ludhiana were looking for their investment destinations in Gurgaon (Gurugram) and Faridabad.
This change can also be seen in another way. Till four decades ago, Gurugram in Haryana was only a village compared to the industrial city of Ludhiana in Punjab. In the last four decades, it has turned into the glitz of the Millennium City, in front of which Ludhiana now looks like a gasping town. Such comparisons of Ludhiana can also be made with many other cities of the country. During this period, many states have developed their new industrial areas, including Punjab’s neighboring Himachal Pradesh, but Punjab has failed to retain the luster of its old industrial areas.
The challenges that Punjab is facing today cannot be solved by giving a few thousand government jobs or by giving one thousand rupees every month to the women’s account or by reducing the electricity bill. The problems in this state are more complex than the promises made in the manifesto of any political party. So the problems are not going to end just by implementing those promises. The problem is that there is hardly any discussion in Punjab politics on how to make up for the lost opportunities. Will this discourse begin now, when the people there have enthusiastically embraced a political change with a massive mandate?
(These are the author’s own views)