Remember all the celebrities who used to sing songs during the long farmers’ protest to highlight the “plight” of the farmers, amid reports that huge foreign funding reached the bank accounts of some farmers’ organisations to sustain the protest?
All such celebrities, NRIs, foreign funders and sympathisers during the farmers’ protest, have vanished when Punjab is drowning in flash floods. Nearly half of Punjab has suffered from floods, some have lost their homes, some their farms and some their kin and livestock. It’s the people of Punjab who have taken charge and are managing with their own savings. They say, when the going gets tough, the tough get going; it’s the people of Punjab who have stood beside each other at this time of crisis.
Undoubtedly, there are administrators who are doing exemplary work to save people during this natural calamity, yet Punjab is suffering beyond measure and the government has been unable to reach every place in time. The seasonal river Ghaggar has unleashed its fury in Punjab after the recent downpour. In all, 29 people have died in rain-related incidents in Punjab, while the death toll in Haryana stands at 26, according to official data.
After a fresh breach at Phus Mandi on Tuesday afternoon, water has reached the outskirts of Sardulgarh town, a few metres from the Sirsa-Mansa highway. While the authorities were still assessing the situation at Sardulgarh, it was “local residents”, most of them villagers, who gathered in large numbers and brought along tractor-trailers and a JCB machine to build a temporary embankment on the highway to Haryana to stop the water from entering the town. The embankment, built on a 2km stretch, has prevented water from entering Sardulgarh, but diverted the flow on Ratia road, which is an open area. Though people managed to stop water from entering the area for more than a day, flood water entered low-lying areas of the town on Wednesday evening. The water level inside the city is not that high and the embankment is holding up.
Hundreds of people had gathered at the state highway on Tuesday and more than 40 tractor-trailers were working on the highway to make the embankment. The residents of the town provided food to people who were working to stop the water. On 15 July, Mansa district drowned in floodwaters entering villages bordering Haryana following two breaches. The river’s embankments at Rorki village of Sardulgarh and near Chandpura Dam at Budhlada in Mansa district gave way on the Punjab side, triggering panic in several villages. Crops on hundreds of acres at Chandpura and Sidhani villages in Haryana are under water, which has now started entering villages of Punjab. While people are trying to plug the breaches, as many as 48 villages of Mansa face the threat of flooding.
People of several places like Budhlada and Sardulgarh villages have started moving their belongings to safer places. Punjab Kisan Union vice-president Darshan Singh said crops had been affected up to Budhlada’s Kulrian village, but floodwaters were likely to affect several other villages in the area. There was a threat to crops at Bhawa, Chak Alisher, Birewala Dogra, Riund Khurd and Riund Kalan, he added.
A Mansa administration official said the Ghaggar’s waters were flowing at these levels in the district for the first time since 1993. “There have been two breaches and we are trying to plug these. However, the current is quite strong and it may take time to repair these,” he said.
As per information, a small bridge over the Ghaggar in Sardulgarh was removed to ease flow of water, but a breach has been reported. Sardulgarh MLA Gurpreet Singh Baniwala alleged Chandpura Dam was located in Haryana, which had imposed Section 144 in the area, preventing strengthening of the bundh by people from Punjab. A breach had now taken place and Punjab villages were getting inundated. As per official records, 26.672 persons have been evacuated and taken to safe places. A spokesperson said that 1,441 villages have been affected by the flood till 8 am on July 20. A total of 155 relief camps are running in the state in which 4424 people are staying.
Currently, 19 districts are affected by floods including Tarn Taran, Ferozepur, Fatehgarh Sahib, Faridkot, Hoshiarpur, Rupnagar, Kapurthala, Patiala, Moga, Ludhiana, SAS Nagar, Jalandhar, Sangrur, and SBS Nagar.
Right now, Punjab is witnessing a few NGOs comprising Khalsa Aid helping sufferers survive and there’s no Punjabi celebrity, leaving aside one or two, seen on the ground helping the people who made them a star; be it Daljit Dosanjh, Jassi, Mika or anyone, no one has come to the rescue. And the recent self-acclaimed hero of Khalistan Amritpal’s supporters too are missing during the flash floods.