Drug addiction spreads - in Punjab

Drug addiction spreads
by Gobind Thukral

Three decades ago we visited the inner Malwa area of Punjab to find out the level of drug addiction. We heard shocking tales of how youth were getting hooked to opium, bhuki and narcotics. Worse, pharmaceutical combinations meant to treat diseases were being consumed for a high.

At Bathinda’s Red Cross de-addiction centre, some well-built youth hailing from rich land-owning families looked pale and forlorn. Some were even married and had children. Doctors and relatives were working hard to wean them from the deadly habit but with limited success.

Parents cursed their fate as wives and sisters prayed to the Almighty to help their husbands and brothers recover. Farm labourers were more miserable as not many had relatives and friends to help them get out of the killer habit. In all, it was a miserable story of hopelessness.

Those were then the sad tales from the Malwa of Punjab. Now drug addiction has spread to all corners of Punjab and Chandigarh. In many villages, towns and cities, not a single family is spared. Haggard youth, locally called “smackia”, greet you at bus terminals, in street corners, close to chemist shops and liquor vends. At marriages and other social gatherings they form separate groups.

Elders advise you to steer clear of these louts. Many parents and elders wish them either dead or move to some foreign lands with the hope that work would reform them.

A senior doctor at Chandigarh’s PGI has estimated the number of drug addicts at several lakhs in Punjab. He also revealed shocking tales of ingenuity like roasting of lizards or even consuming pain killers and tranquillisers of various forms. Narcotic powder and heroin seized in Punjab in the last three years is sufficient as a single dose for over 50 lakh people.

Once hooked, young men soon graduate to cough syrups and then move on to a lethal diet of opium, charas, ganja, mandrax, smack and heroin. Those who cannot afford these take a deep breath of petrol or spread Iodex on bread to get a momentary thrill.

Studies by PGI doctors over the years have found peer pressure, thrill-seeking and even curiosity about drugs as the main factors that make youth take to drugs. Lack of any purpose in life was another key reason.

Myths related to sexual potency, thrill-seeking and punitive attitude of elders and lack of support during periods of stress were other reasons for drug addiction. This widespread consumption of intoxicants gives a false sense of coming-of-age status for youth.

The Punjab Department of Social Security Development of Women and Children conducted a survey in 2005 and found 67 per cent of the rural households in Punjab having one drug addict each. The report that covered Jalandhar, Kapurthala, Hoshiarpur, Amritsar, Ferozepur, Ludhiana, Muktsar and Gurdaspur found narcotics were the most common form of addiction.

Dr Ravinder Singh Sandhu, Professor, Department of Sociology, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, found more than 73 per cent of drug addicts belong to the age group of 16-35 years. There are numerous studies to warn political and social leaders of the dangerous situation where Punjab has landed in. Intriguingly, the excise policy followed by the successive governments is liberal and aims at getting more and more taxes through more and more liquor vends.

Currently, the revenue is around Rs 1,728 crore as opposed to Rs 1,656 crore in 2007-08.

There were 6,902 liquor vends in Punjab. In Chandigarh there are more liquor vends than government primary schools. Now add to this illicit distillation, almost two times and the sixth river of Punjab is full of intoxicants.

There is a well-knit nexus that makes the supply and sale of drugs a smooth lucrative business and it puts to shame the government’s lethargic corrupt functioning. The smuggler-police-politician nexus, aided by a chain of retail outlets, works smoothly. Interestingly, politicians and law-enforcement agents blame each other for the mess. We all know how politicians use smugglers for money and musclemen.

Chemists along with quacks, drug peddlers and truck drivers have been identified as the main supply sources of drugs in Punjab. Chemists provide drugs to addicts without a prescription. Even many of the so-called de-addiction centres are actually proving to be addiction centres. These are, in fact, supplying drugs to the inmates. The number of chemist shops and de-addiction centres has increased at an unbelievable rate. Private de-addiction centres lack basic facilities but earn a quick buck.

Now during the election time, the supply is maintained by political leaders to please voters. Several thousand new drug addicts have been added during the present elections.

The problem has assumed epidemic proportions in the rural areas where the education level is low and unemployment rampant. Not a single village is without scores of drug addicts.

Is this not the time for leaders like Mr Parkash Singh Badal and Capt Amarinder Singh to at least instruct their candidates and cadres not to supply drugs to voters?

with thanks : source : http://www.tribuneindia.com/2009/20090509/edit.htm#7

sikhsindia
www.sohnijodi.com

Sikh community seeks probe into Guru Granth Sahib ‘sacrilege’

Express News Service
Posted: May 11, 2009 at 0126 hrs IST

Mohali The Sikh community has sought a thorough probe into the alleged sacrilege of Guru Granth Sahib, recently reported from Takht Sri Kesgarh Sahib in Anandpur Sahib.
Addressing a press conference on Sunday, SGPC member Hardeep Singh said two distorted birs-Guru Granth Sahib and Dasam Granth-in one binding is being seen as a deep-rooted conspiracy.

“These birs contain 2830 and 2858 pages respectively, where as the authentic Guru Granth Sahib contains 1430 pages,” said Singh while adding that any addition or alteration in the holy book is considered as an act of sacrilege.

Terming it as “anti-Sikh” and intolerable, Singh has sent a representation to SGPC president, demanding a probe by Sikh scholars and SGPC members into the matter.

with thanks : source : http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/sikh-community-seeks-probe-into-guru-granth-sahib-sacrilege/457247/

sikhsindia
www.sohnijodi.com

Sikh "snub" on BBC angers Sikh organisation

May 10, 2009

The Network of Sikh Organisations (NSO) is crying foul again at the BBC. It said that Sikhs were allegedly snubbed during a discussion on a BBC Radio 4 show.

In a press release, NSO said, "On Sunday 5th April, this year, BBC Radio 4's 'Sunday' religious programme carried a lengthy discussion on 'leadership in different religions. The producers invited representatives from different branches of Christianity, Judaism, Islam and the Hindu faith and even a 'secularist' to contribute to the debate, but deliberately avoided inviting a Sikh."

The release further claimed that "no attempt was made to contact the NSO the largest grouping of Sikhs in the UK, nor as far as we are aware, any other Sikh organisation. Why?"

The organisation further attacked the public service broadcaster for not carrying any mentions of the important Sikh festival of Vasaikhi being celebrated by Sikhs throughout the world. It said, "The BBC’s own section on religion on the Internet acknowledges Vasaikhi as being 'one of the most important dates in the Sikh calendar'."

Last year, the media monitoring group said it was unhappy with the lack of coverage to the Sikh and Hindu faiths on BBC TV and radio.

A breakdown of programming from the BBC's Religion and Ethics department, revealed that since 2001, the BBC made forty-one faith programmes on Islam, compared with just five on Hinduism and one on Sikhism. This research and subsequent concern within both the Sikh and Hindu communities caused some furore and was widely reported in the press.

Dr. Indarjit Singh, the Director of the Network of Sikh Organisations is extremely concerned by these recent developments.

Asked to comment, he said, "I’m not really sure to what extent this lack of sensitivity to Sikhs is deliberate or simply due to ignorance. In any event, it is extremely serious and the BBC should take urgent steps to ensure fairness to all communities in its religious coverage."

At the time of filing this article, BizAsia.co.uk was awaiting a response from the BBC.

with thanks : source : BizAsia.co.uk

sikhsindia
www.sohnijodi.com

Why Punjab is Rahul's political lab

Punjab is Rahul Gandhi's political laboratory, where the Congress general secretary has chosen youthful candidates to take on the Akali Dal and BJP. Vicky Nanjappa reports from the state.

Rahul Gandhi's message to Congressmen and women across the country is clear: In future elections youth will get preference in the party. The Congress general secretary has chosen Punjab as the role model state to introduce youth into the fray.

Seeking to bring in a more democratic procedure, Rahul first ensured that elections were held in the Punjab Youth Congress party last year. This is the first time that the president of a Youth Congress unit was elected democratically.

After the PYC poll, Rahul personally monitored the selection of candidates for the Lok Sabha election from Punjab. He handpicked three candidates in their early 30s -- Ravneet Singh Bittu, the late chief minister Beant Singh's grandson and the first democratically-elected PYC president, from Anandpur Sahib; Sukhvinder Singh Danny, PYC vice-president, for Faridkot, and Vijay Inder Singla, former PYC president, for the Sangrur constituency.

Former chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh's 41-year-old son Raninder Singh is also in the fray from Bhatinda. Although senior Congress leaders initially kicked up a fuss about the induction of the new candidates, they have now fallen in line.

The dissent from former chief minister Rajinder Kaur Battal's faction was perhaps the most vocal. Members of Bhattal's group say their only problem with the youth nominees is that the selection was made in consultation with Captain Singh, Bhattal's bitter adversary.

Vijay Inder Singla, the candidate from Sangrur, told rediff.com that no political risk is involved in the selection and the nominees have been chosen with great care.

So why has Rahul chosen Punjab as his political lab and given youth preference over experienced leaders like Ashwani Kumar and Ambika Soni?

Party sources say two factors prompted Rahul to chose Punjab for his experiment. Youth comprise almost 50 per cent of the vote in Punjab and this generation, it is felt, prefers younger candidates who can address their issues better.

Moreover, Anandpur Sahib, Faridkot and Sangrur have been dominated by party old-timers who Rahul wanted to phase out. The Congress expects to do very well in Punjab where an anti-incumbency vote against Parkash Singh Badal's Akali Dal government is expected.

None of Rahul's candidates are contesting from their home constituencies. Despite this, Congress sources believe the party could have won with any candidate from Anandpur Sahib, Faridkot and Sangrur.

Singla says the moment for youth has never been better in Punjab and Rahul's experiment will boost the Congress's chances. The youth factor, he adds, will ensure a Congress victory in all 13 seats in the state.

with thanks : source : http://election.rediff.com/special/2009/may/06/loksabhapolls-inside-rahul-gandhis-youth-laboratory.htm

sikhsindia
www.sohnijodi.com

Will Sidhu manage a hat-trick in Amritsar?

Vicky Nanjappa and photographer Satish Bodas travel to Amritsar and find the colourful Navjot Singh Sidhu in a tough battle to retain his Lok Sabha seat.

The electoral battle for Amritsar, which goes to the polls on May 13, promises to be an interesting one. Charismatic Bharatiya Janata Party Member of Parliament Navjot Singh Sidhu is pitted against Congress candidate Om Prakash Soni, who holds the impressive record of winning every election that he has ever contested.

After spending a day on Sidhu's campaign trail, it is evident that the cricketer-turned-politician has impressed middle and upper middle class voters in Amritsar, which has 1.248 million voters.

However, he seems to have made a dent among voters in rural parts of his constituency like Ajnala. The villagers are unhappy about him being absent for long stretches of time; they feel he is more visible on their television sets than he is in the constituency that twice elected him to the Lok Sabha.

with thanks : source : http://election.rediff.com/slide-show/2009/may/07/slide-show-1-will-sidhu-manage-hattrick-in-amritsar.htm

sikhsindia
www.sohnijodi.com

Paramjit Singh Sarna elected SGPC president

Sarna elected SGPC president

New Delhi: Paramjit Singh Sarna was on Saturday unanimously re-elected president of Delhi Sikh Gurudwara Prabhandhak Committee for the sixth time. Mr. Sarna is presently chairman of Shiromani Akali Dal (Delhi).

After his election, he named Bhajan Singh Walia as vice-president, Joginder Singh Guru Rakha as treasurer, Gurmeet Singh Shanti as general secretary and Kartar Singh Kochar as joint secretary.

with thanks : source : http://www.hindu.com/2009/05/10/stories/2009051058790400.htm

sikhsindia
www.sohnijodi.com

Why do you think there are 300 gurdwaras in the USA

These are the comments received by us from one of our visitor :

Why do you think there are 300 gurdwaras in the USA ... because there is so much politics and infighting for leadership and control ... so after a year or two ... the next Sikh tries starting his own gurdwara after being thrown out of the first gurdwara. It is such a terrible situation ... Sikhs themselves are burning down gurdwaras so that the insurance money will help in building a new gurdwara.

Really shocking.
Can you believe it ?
SikhsIndia
www.sohnijodi.com

Where are we heading for - a wake up call for the sikh community

In Punjab the Turban is disappearing fast. Upto 90% of sikh families in Punjab have atleast a couple of members without a turban. Trimming of beards has become a fashion. In all the cities of India and in every part of Punjab, we can find the sikh youth with trimmed beards. Nearly 70% of youth in Punjab are in the grip of Drugs. This menace is blooming amongst the children and in a rapid manner, threatening the life of the youth of the State of Punjab. The sex ratio in Punjab is not improving inspite of best efforts of various organisations. Even the holy city Amritsar has 818 girls for 1000 boys, resulting into polygamy. Churches are being planted in punjab. Over 60 % localities of Ludhiana and over 50% villages in punjab have got a church.

Isn't it a wake up call for the sikh community. May i ask from the Sikh leaders, Sikh politicians, Sikh masses that where are we heading for. Please give it a serious thought.

sikhsindia
www.sohnijodi.com

Huge blaze destroys Sikh temple

More than 70 firefighters tackled a blaze that destroyed a Sikh temple in Greater Manchester.
Huge blaze destroys Sikh temple
Friday, 8 May 2009 09:08 UK

The blaze ripped through a multi-use building in the Strangeways area of Cheetham Hill at 2330 BST on Wednesday.

The ground floor offices and the first floor, which was home to the temple, were gutted in the fire.

Firefighters tackled the blaze throughout the night. An investigation is under way but the fire is not thought to be suspicious.

A fire service spokeswoman said: "There was a partial collapse in the first floor ceiling and firefighters had to enter the building wearing breathing apparatus to tackle the blaze."

Bury Road is closed while crews dampen the blaze down.

with thanks : source : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/manchester/8039526.stm

sikhsindia
www.sohnijodi.com

The Punjabi student, Narinder Singh Kapany, is known as the father of fiber optics.

With Heading :

FATHER OF FIBRE OPTICS EXPLAINS HOW IT BAGAN
David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor

The vandals who slashed fiber-optic cables, leaving thousands of South Bay residents without phone and Internet service Thursday, struck at one of the most critical elements of America's vast communication network.

People who talk to each other across a city or a nation - or do business locally or around the world, or seek electronic home entertainment from anywhere - depend on slender bundles of glass fibers, thinner than a human hair, that carry signals or images at nearly the speed of light.

"It really is a miraculous technology, and the Internet couldn't exist in its present form without it," said Joseph Kahn, a Stanford professor of electrical engineering and one of the nation's leading specialists in optical fiber transmission.

The miracle began nearly 60 years ago when a Punjabi university student who now lives in Palo Alto challenged his Indian professor's dogma and set off on his own voyage of discovery that led him to pioneer the science and technology of fiber optics.

Today's fiber-optic cables are bundles of dozens of single hair-thin strands, each fiber made of highly purified glass - often pure silica - and coated in a cladding of impure glass that holds light beams inside. A single cable, about 4 inches thick, has the capability to hold dozens of fibers, which can carry pulses of light signals as far as 200 miles - either curving or in a straight line - at about two-thirds the speed of light. Inside each fiber, the light's "message" is reflected again and again at an angle against the fiber's wall as it travels along, Kahn said.

For long-distance communication, relay stations, known as optical amplifiers, are located every 50 to 60 miles to boost the light signals until they reach the end of their voyage - a phone company, a high-speed Internet connection, or a doctor's instrument probing a patient's throat.

The Punjabi student, Narinder Singh Kapany, is known as the father of fiber optics.

On Friday, Kapany, now 80, explained how it all began.

"I was just a precocious kid taking a college physics course when one day the professor told us that light 'always travels in a straight line,' " he recalled. "But that can't be true, I thought - it must be bent sometimes."

So he continued thinking about light as he went on with his physics studies, he said.

"And when I won a Royal Society fellowship for advanced study in optics at the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London," Kapany said, "I really understood the principle we now call the total reflection of light - the principle of fiber optics that let me to experiment with light beams inside bent glass tubes."

Initially, he said, he thought only of medical applications, such as the kind of fiber-optic tubes that allow physicians peer into human organs.

"Only later did I realize that a fiber-optic cable could carry light for many miles - and so it can," he said.

Kapany founded a company called Optics Technology Inc. One of its directors was the late Luis Alvarez, the UC Berkeley Nobel Prize-winning physicist.

The company succeeded, as did others, and now he calls himself a "man of changed priorities." These include teaching at Stanford, UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz.

At UC Santa Cruz, Kapany has endowed a chair in optical electronics, and at UC Santa Barbara, a chair in Sikh Studies. He has also financed the collection of Sikh art at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, and leads international activities on behalf of the Sikh community - his own tradition.

with thanks source : http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/11/MNGD170HIH.DTL

pics with thanks from : sikhnet.com

sikhsindia
www.sohnijodi.com

Forgotten legacy of the Sikhs

Sikh military police in Kota Baru. The photograph was
published in W. A. Graham’s Kelantan – a State of the
Malay Peninsular in 1908.

ABOUT three weeks ago, hundreds of Penangites and tourists attended a celebration within the historic premises of Fort Cornwallis, the oldest existing man-made site in Penang, to commemorate the Sikh festival of Vaisakhi.

Lost to most people, however, was one particular cultural significance of the site. It was here, soon after the British built the fort in 1786, that the country’s first gurdwara or Sikh temple was housed, for Sikh paramilitary personnel stationed in Penang.

Today, the fort still stands but the temple is no longer there. It made way when the government decided to give away a piece of veterinary land on Brick Kiln Road (now Jalan Gurdwara) for the construction of a bigger temple in 1899, which still stands. The new building was the largest Sikh temple in Southeast Asia at that time.

Like the little-known historic implication of Fort Cornwallis to the Sikhs and the heritage of Penang, there are many other rich facts of the community’s legacy that have become buried by the sands of time.

About two years ago, I chanced to meet historian Malkiat Singh Lopo, to review his novel The Enchanting Prison. Set in Malaya during the early part of the 1900s, Lopo’s work poignantly chronicles the early hardships, predicaments and successes of the Sikhs who, like other communities, helped propel the nation into the modern industrialised land it is today.

The early Sikh community had in fact produced a string of prolific writers. In one book, Maha Jang Europe (Great European War) 1914-1918AD, writer Havildar (Sgt) Nand Singh vividly described the daring exploits of the Malay States Guides (MSG) in Aden when they fought the Turkish forces.

The MSG, a body of local Indian troops which formed Malaya’s own regiment, was based in Taiping. In 1873, the Orang Kaya Mantri of Larut, Dato’ Ngah Ibrahim, was worried about rivalry between Ghee Hin and Hai San Chinese clans in the tin-mining region, and wanted fighting men from Punjab to maintain law and order. He consulted Capt T. Speedy who formed the 1st Battalion Perak Sikhs, which originally comprised 110 men of Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims. This battalion became the MSG in 1896.

When the MSG was disbanded, the Singh Sabha, a registered local Sikh society, convinced the British resident that the holy temple, the gurdwara, within the Taiping army compound belonged to the Sikhs and not the military.

Once the resident was agreeable, the sabha performed an incredible feat of dismantling the building and re-erecting it almost intact on the present site granted by the government near the railway station. The building is today called the Gurdwara Sahib Taiping.

Malaya was the first foreign country that people from Punjab in India, where the majority of Sikhs live, migrated to. Most of these early migrants were needed by the British colonial government.

While many belonged to the army and police, a steady stream of other occupations also grew – milkmen, cattle farmers, guards, craftsmen and tailors.

The community has left many anecdotes of its legacy. For example, as Sikh populations on the peninsula rose, a unique service established itself in railway towns like Taiping, Kuala Kangsar, and Tanjung Malim where trains would stop for a while. It became a common sight to see Sikh men with milk churns standing on the railway platforms, giving away free warm milk to travellers.

But perhaps the most quaint imprint of the Sikhs lies today in George Town’s magnificent Chinese clan temple of the Khoo Kongsi. As one ascends the steps of the temple, it is difficult not to notice a pair of statues carved out of granite as if welcoming visitors.

The two figures of Sikh guards stand imposingly on the ornate pavilion of the century-old complex. The sight of turbaned Indians being featured prominently at the entrance of a Chinese Fuchien temple may seem jarring.

But not so if one knew the legacy left by the great Sikhs of India in multicultural Penang.

“Sikhs were employed as reliable guards in the old days,” explains researcher Yong Check Yoon who has done a detailed study of the complex.

“And so to post them permanently ‘guarding’ the temple, the Khoo clansmen had two statues of the Sikh sentinels made to ‘guard’ the prayer pavilion.”

The two guards today form a small but fascinating cultural feature among the many communities that have come together to make the great kaleidoscope of our nation.

Himanshu is theSun’s Penang bureau chief.

with thanks : source : http://www.thesundaily.com/article.cfm?id=33148

sikhsindia
www.sohnijodi.com