The Censor Board's decision to order massive cuts in the film Udta Punjab, which talks about drug trade, drugs and addiction in the state, has turned into a major controversy. The Censor Board has asked all references to Punjab, Chandigarh, Amritsar, Jalandhar and some other cities to be deleted from the film. These and several other deletions ordered will 'sanitize' the film - as if made about some extra terrestrial location. The unreal antics of the government appointed Censor Board have only been surpassed by muckraking of the various political parties making it into their own football. The film industry giants such as Shyam Benegal and Amitabh Bachchan have supported the unquestionable constitutional right of freedom of expression of the filmmaker to release the film without what appears to be absolutely illegitimate, unenlightened and dumb deletions sought by the censors; the censor in this case has acted as if it was labouring under the Chinese 'proletarian' dictatorship. WATCH: Udta Punjab Controversy: Youth Has The Right To Know Drugs Are A Menace, Says Shahid Kapoor It is rumoured that the ruling alliance of the BJP and the Akali Dal in Punjab have pushed the censors that the deletions be made. If true, it only strengthens the impression that the BJP/RSS supporters' intolerant proclivities are well and alive. India has already witnessed murders of rationalists, intellectuals, Mohd Akhlaq and campaigns against dissenters opposing the right wing norms at universities, to name just a few. So the Udta Punjab saga joins a long line of anti-civil libertarian consequences of the ugly politics plaguing the Indian polity. When I left India in 1964, Punjab was a large and relatively prosperous state that included the present Himachal and Haryana. The Akalis appealing to just Sikhs, and only the religiously inclined among them, would never have won elections in the larger Punjab. So they set about seeking a Punjab where they could rule. They succeeded. We now have that Punjab; the much emasculated, smaller and much less important Punjab, in the country as a whole. WATCH: Ravi Shankar Prasad Reacts To The Udta Punjab Row & Nihalani’s ‘Modi’s Chamcha’ Comment Once the pride, the granary and the military muscle of India, Punjab has shrivelled into a tiny, enfeebled and insignificant state. It is no longer the main granary of the country. The agriculture has suffered due to total deterioration of its soil and water. Its industrial base is next to nonexistent. It has significantly slid downwards on the Human Development Index compared to other states in the country. Just as it is in the most part of the rest of the country, the state and quality of primary and secondary public education is absolutely third rate; every year there are more private schools being built and equipped than government schools. The rampant all India corruption is equally, if not more potent, prevalent in Punjab. The law and order, if not worse, is at least as bad as in many other states. With rare exceptions, the judiciary and police are absolutely corrupt. Financially and fiscally once the envy of other states, Punjab's treasury is now perpetually empty. The Punjab government's debt runs into billions of dollars with a diminishing capacity to pay even the interest on it, let alone pay it off. Over the last several decades the successive administrations have run Punjab into the ground. Old failed politics in the hands of new and old politicians is a playground for meaningless bickering among them. The divisive identity politics reigns supreme and no party is immune to it. There is no wholesome, progressive and inclusive vision of the state being argued in the pre election campaigns underway. The state of politics in Punjab is entirely reflective of the state of moral and ethical decay in the politics of India at large. One is reminded of the great Indian Guru Nanak's verse critiquing the conditions of his time "Rajay sheenh mukadam kutay, Jayen jagaain baithay suttay" - meaning, "the rulers are man-eating lions, the prosecutors (judges) dogs, let's awaken the slumbering public.". People! Awake!! Awake to the truth that while Udta Punjab needs liberating from the dumb censors, the doobta Punjab needs rescuing, as does India, from its ugly and ruinous politics.
