Punjab politics has produced a dog’s breakfast on the river waters issue. Except, you’d see even dogs eat better, says Shekhar Gupta.
IMAGE: Farmers filling the Sutlej-Yamuna Link canal with the help of excavators in Saini Majra village in Punjab. Photograph: PTI Photo.
It is tough for us to focus on something as unfamiliar as the Sutlej-Yamuna Link, or SYL (no, SYL isn’t a mistype for YSL, the more familiar French designer label). A fight between Punjab and Haryana, states that together send only 23 MPs to the Lok Sabha, too doesn’t shake us. Let me, therefore, try a little sensationalism, or what a journalist might call, dateline-sensationalism. So forget Haryana and Punjab, Sutlej and even Yamuna now that Sri Sri has gone. Think Pathankot.
Better still, move your eye 10 miles north of Pathankot where the state of Jammu and Kashmir begins. Now imagine its state assembly passing a law abrogating the Indus Water Treaty. Or, closer home, withdrawing permission for the railways to construct in the state, barring the Indian Army from operating, rejecting the imposition of AFSPA. Some of us would go straight to the rooftops, some distinguished grey moustaches would go to TV studios shouting treason, some would load the rifles, and the rest would say, see, we told you so. What did you expect from Kashmiris? Bury that wretched Article 370. Right now.
Enough sensationalism, so shift your gaze back below Pathankot. The state to which it belongs, Punjab, has just passed a law killing its solemn river-water agreement with neighbour and younger sibling Haryana and returned to its farmers land acquired from them more 38 years ago for digging the 213-km SYL canal. Just one newspaper, The Tribune, has kept us posted and forewarned of this incredible constitutional anarchy.
The fact is the governor, Kaptan Singh Solanki, hasn’t even signed Punjab’s new law returning these lands, but who cares. The “law”is being implemented. With JCBs and bulldozers to fell thousands of trees and to fill up the canal with them, debris and soil. The entire country and its institutions have been given a fait accompli. The Supreme Court of India, which ordered that status quo be maintained, has been told where to get off: we’ve got no water for anybody, says Punjab.
If all this isn’t absurd, His Excellency Mr Solanki is currently the governor of both Punjab and Haryana. Both assemblies are in their budget sessions and he has dutifully read the addresses provided by each government. For Punjab, he said, we won’t give any water, and for Haryana, of course, that we shan’t accept such injustice. Still not absurd enough? Both Haryana and Punjab are ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party, the latter with Shiromani Akali Dal as the leading partner.
Others are joining in the fun. In Haryana, the Congress and Om Prakash Chautala’s party (actually a loyal Akali ally electorally) are backing the BJP government in fighting for their state’s rights. In Punjab the Congress is fully backing the Akali Dal’s anarchism. The always holier-than-cow Aam Aadmi Party has jumped in too, with Arvind Kejriwal saying that Punjab shouldn’t give its water to Haryana which, in turn, is saying, thank you, we won’t give any to Delhi.
Since the AAP is rising as a common thread in Punjab, both the Badals and Amarinder Singh are telling the voters that Mr Kejriwal is a Haryanavi out to steal your water. In Haryana, where the government has been so busy hiding from the Jats while protecting the cow (in a state where nobody would ever dare harm one) and re-discovering
the Saraswati, the SYL canal has meanwhile gone extinct and the Yamuna too might soon enough. ear">
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