Manpreet Badal: Questions for Modi, Swaraj on our 39 dead in Iraq

There is a saying in Punjab, “Baari varsi khatan gaya si, khatke lyanda ki?” Loosely translated into English, this enjoins a young man to leave his home and to go to an alien land for a period of 12 years, to earn his fortune.

In a way this reflects the essential Punjabi zeitgeist of working hard, toiling towards a better life and ensuring that your family is well taken care of. This is also one of the reasons, why people from Punjab constitute such a large portion of the Indian diaspora.

The 39 young Indians who were ‘officially declared dead’ yesterday by the foreign minister, too had gone in search of better life for themselves and their families. Most of them were from Punjab, hoping to escape the miasma of discrimination and stagnation that is the dual bane of most Indians who are unable to afford themselves a bourgeoisie English medium education.

This is not the first time we are hearing a sordid tale about our “children” being brutally killed in a foreign land. Sordid tales of young men falling victim to unscrupulous immigration mafia or losing their lives on perilous and illegal voyages to gain that coveted entry to their promised lands appear with a painful frequency every few years. It is indeed a damning indictment of successive Indian governments’ failure to create education and employment opportunities within India.

Having said that, there are few question that the Modi government needs to answer in this particular case. Why were the families who regularly met the foreign minister, given false assurances that their children were alive? Why was the testimony of the sole young man, who managed to escape, ignored when he categorically stated that all those who were captured had been killed? Our foreign minister, ever so benign on social media, kept the families in denial, gave them false hopes and then one fine day, just like that, communicates that their dear family members are confirmed dead.

Our honourable Prime Minister scarcely loses an opportunity to claim that India enjoys a respect in the international community that it never enjoyed before. Is this evidence of the respect that Indians citizens enjoy? Is this the superpower that he claims India has become under his leadership? Actually, those who are familiar with BJP’s record, may not actually be surprised by this instance. The BJP leaders try to give an impression of strong leadership through bullying minorities, women and students. But when faced with an international challenge, BJP governments have looked embarrassingly meek—IC814 hijack and the subsequent capitulation, the brutal killing of Indian soldiers by Bangladesh Rifles in 2001, the massive intelligence failure that led to the Kargil incursions, the more recent embarrassments in Hoshiarpur and Doklam, are some of the many instances.

One can only sincerely hope that such a tragedy does not happen again. But then, millions of young Indian will continue to put their lives in danger, fully aware of the perils that await them in foreign lands. They shall do so, because despite the tall promises of the Prime Minister of creating “rozgar”, they are unable to find honourable opportunities to earn decent livelihoods. For all the all grand talk by Modiji, the reality is that every year more than 12 million Indians enter the workforce. Of these barely one sixth find some form of meaningful employment opportunity. The remaining are either left despondent or desperate—desperate enough to take dangerous overseas journeys, fully knowing that they may never come back.

The author is Finance Minister of Punjab and Congress MLA from Gidderbaha