You could call it a journey of disenchantment. After traversing almost the whole of Punjab, my head is whirling with a kaleidoscope of images, words and unspoken emotions. I hunted in vain for the legendary robust, Sikh farmer, oozing good health and joviality. In his place I found a gaunt, dispirited man.I have returned disturbed, rather than reassured, by the sight of a state which returned to normalcy after a prolonged bout of terrorism. But today, the customary joie de vivre is singularly missing. The prevailing leitmotif is one of deprivation, of frustration, of a wound which is still open and festering. Of a populace whose basic economic problems remain unaddressed.Wherever I went, the feeling of anger and resentment towards the state government was almost palpable. In a particularly backward village in Gurdaspur, I was besieged by old women imploring me to find jobs for their sons. Like in pre-terrorism days, youngsters still hang around unemployed and idle, while tiny farms just about keeppeople alive.Of course there is one major change. Men have adopted passive forms of protest - instead of taking to the gun, they have begun taking their own lives. In the past three years, most suicides in villages have been committed by men below the age of 30. Unemployed men with very basic educational profiles.As I drive through border villages in Tarn Taran, I pass an old woman in a tattered salwar kameez, wandering down the road aimlessly. I am told she is Bibi Kans Kaur, who became insane after losing her entire family to terrorism. As I approach her, she shies away, looking at me fearfully. All the while, an incoherent babble escapes her lips. There are many more poignant cameos like her, relatives of those who were killed or arrested by the police. Most of them are sane, but bitter and revengeful.A feeling of unease grips me on my journey back to Chandigarh. I confer with a police officer who voices my own inner suspicion that ``unemployment, recidivism, poverty and revenge are allconditions conducive to some sort of movement.''What form that movement will take is uncertain. The anger could be put to constructive use if channelised by a wise politician. Or else, it could be mis-utilised by our neighbour. For months now, Pakistan has been making desperate attempts, albeit without much success, to revive militancy in the state. Over the past one year, the state police have reportedly seized close to a quintal of RDX, fake currency worth more than Rs 50 lakh, small quantities of arms like silencer fitted pistols and sophisticated detonating kits like ABCD timers and pencil timers.If police sources are to be believed, the once decimated Babbar Khalsa International and the Khalistan Commando Force have raised around a dozen recruits each in the past one year. They comprise youths who go abroad to scout around for jobs and are then ensnared by touts who send them to Pakistan after impounding their passports. A police official claims: "Amongst this lot, there are a sprinkling ofideologically committed people active till date. Their distinct ideological layer is intact. At least three of them are potential human bombs."This alarmist statement sounds scary, but I am inclined to take it with a pinch of salt. I wish I could do the same about the statements of Akali politicians. For both Badal and Tohra are currently using religion as a weapon to demolish each other. Hindus and Sikhs in the state voted for Badal last time because of his image as a moderate Sikh. But these days religion has taken the front-seat in his public statements. If the power struggle between the Akalis becomes more intense, the state's already diseased structure could weaken even further.And don't forget, the enemy is waiting for that moment.
