State in its hour of maximum danger: Manpreet Singh Badal
Wednesday, 26/04/2017
http://epaper.dailypostindia.com/Details.aspx?id=176027&boxid=58363&uid=&dat=2017-04-26
Chandigarh : Punjab Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal on Tuesday made an impassioned plea for reviving the state, which he said was in its “hour of maximum danger”. “Sometimes it’s embarrassing to see what we’ve led Punjab to,” said an emotional Manpreet, calling himself a “gunehgaar banda” (guilty).
“Individually and collectively, we are all responsible for bringing to shame Punjab and Punjabiyat,” he said.
Badal, who was speaking at the book launch of veteran journalist P P S Gill’s second book ‘Blood on the Green: Punjab’s Tryst with Terror’, in Chandigarh, recalled Gill’s article in which he’d written, “If Punjab lives, everybody lives; if Punjab dies, who lives?”
He pleaded, “We must pool all our resources of intellect and capital to give back to Punjab.” Quoting from former US president Robert Kennedy’s inaugural speech, he said, “Punjab is in its hour of maximum danger.”
Badal reminded the gathering how Punjab had always managed to rise from the ashes, be it the invasion by Ahmed Shah Abdali or the havoc of Partition. “It built Chandigarh and the Bhakra dam 25 years after Partition,” he said, adding that it had, however, failed to rise after 1984 even after a succession of democratically-elected governments.
The finance minister, known for his fondness for poetry, was at his eloquent best, as he described the fall of Punjab. He lamented that a state blessed with a garland of five rivers, had come to such a sorry pass. “Punjab di dharti sher jamdi si (This land used to birth lions),” he underlined the contrast with the present, adding he was saddened to see, “where we could have been and where we have landed.”
Earlier, in a scathing remark on the Punjab polity, he said the book reminded him “of how petty politics in Punjab was and is.”
