Time to demand right to dignified life from political parties and not doles, people must dictate their terms

 

People must frame own manifesto, force political parties to guarantee life with dignity

 

Ground Zero

Jagtar Singh

One of the most positive dimensions of the February 2022 Assembly elections in Punjab is the multiple choices that the people would have for the first time. It is no more wheat-paddy cropping pattern in political domain in Punjab.

However, the variety, by and large, is not much different.

Rejects from the one formation are managing to find space in the other.

Emerging after the longest ever and successful agrarian struggle, it was expected that the political dynamics in the state might undergo some qualitative changes.

One of the outcomes of this struggle seemed to be the politics of accountability.

However, what is happening is that the political parties are out-competing each other by offering the choice from their respective  menu cards.

If one party guarantees Rs 1000 as pension to women, the others raise the bids much higher and so on.

These are not the real issues.

The real issues relate to life with dignity that has been the historical trait of the people associated with the region that is known as Punjab.

This calls for a different framework at every level.

Punjab is the only region that has resisted every type of repression by the state. This resistance defines what can be termed as living at one’s own terms.

This is what the ruling dispensation has to honour. Presently, this is not so.

The people should not succumb to the guarantees being offered by the leaders like Arvind Kejriwal and the like but seek guarantee to live a life of dignity.

Undertakings must be sought from the political parties and the individual candidates that after coming into power, they would treat the people with dignity and not humiliate them.

The people taking to protests peacefully should not be lathicharged.

The police should not open fire on protesters.

This institutionalised humiliation of the people by the political elite must end.

The Danda Raj has to go.

The political parties must promise that they would abandon this colonial framework of governance under which people are treated as subjects and not as dignified citizens. This would take time but the beginning has to be made and this is the time to make that beginning.

The leaders after getting elected sould not enter the villages under heavy security cover.

It is ridiculous that even the family members of the MLAs and ministers in Punjab can be seen canvassing under a heavy security cover, even inside the houses of the people they visit. They themselves upload their such pictures on social media platforms.

This should not be accepted as something normal. It is not and it should not be allowed.

The farm struggle has taken the level of awareness of people to a higher level and this awareness must be translated into action.

The people must assert that life with dignity is their fundamental right and the present style of the political elite amounts to attack on that dignity.

The bureaucracy should not treat people with disdain but function like public servants in letter and spirit. This has to be ensured by the ruling formation.

Why the schools and colleges should continue without adequate teachers and the heads? Why should dispensaries be without doctors or medicines?

Although functioning of schools has come up at the centre stage, it is too well known that this is among the least preferred department by the ministers for the obvious reasons. The uninterested ministers are least bothered about the state of affairs of schools and colleges.

It may be mentioned here that the Government Rajindra Hospital and the Punjabi University in Patiala have been among the top institutions in Punjab. Both have decayed over the years. Both these institutions are in the city of ‘Maharaja’ Capt. Amarinder Singh who has been the chief minister twice and a minister once. This is just one example.

Similar is the case with the Guru Nanak Dev Hospital at Amritsar.

Why can’t these once prestigious hospitals be revived?

The political parties are fooling the people by offering employment. This is in contradiction to the  free market model under which emphasis is on privatisation. It is because of this very model that the premier hospitals at Patiala and Amritsar have suffered while the government offered lands to the corporates to create costly health facilities.

Government hospitals have decayed and private hospitals have turned unaffordable and in the process medical insurance companies have come up. The loser is the common man.

The right to life with dignity must ensure that the exploitation of the common man would end.

Rather than demanding subsidised Atta and Daal and the like, the people should rise and demand what is their right.

The right to dignified life has to include all this.

The people should take the initiative to dictate the agenda to the political parties.

This is what the Kisan leaders not resorting to power politics should do and function as the pressure group while also involving various other sections of the society.