Radio Pakistan ‘peeved’ at Punjab farmers innovative skills
By ANIMonday, February 1, 2010
BATHINDA - Punjab farms are some of the best irrigated areas in India, but if you listen to the Punjabi Durbar programme of Radio Pakistan the fields in Punjab are dry and the farmers are in despair.
Sukhdeep Singh Sidhu, a village head and a progressive farmer of Punjab feels that the Punjabi Durbar programme should send its representative across the border to witness how well irrigated are the lands on Indian side of the international border.
“Punjab was once the land of five rivers. After the 1947 partition half of the rivers went to Pakistan. But the Punjab farmers themselves have been able to develop water sources to to fulfill their needs,” said Sukhdeep Singh Sidhu.
” Radio, TV and newspaper journalism, should not be used to provoke communal tension. We are surprised that Radio Pakistan is indulging in false propaganda to provoke uneducated people in villages. But the Punjab farmers have seen an era of terrorism and they have become mature enough to judge the credibility of the mis-information given on the radio.”
Radio Pakistan’s broadcasters cannot digest the progress, the prosperity and the innovativeness of farmers in Punjab.
Be it for the purposes of agriculture or drinking, Punjab farmers have adequate water to fulfil their all irrigational needs.
It would have been better had the Radio Pakistan focussed itself on the plight of farmers living on their side of the divide or the unemployment or the development marred by spread of terrorism and fundamentalism, or its Government’s lethargic attitude to free its land from Taliban and assert its sovereignty on its land.
Broadcasters of the Radio Pakistan should know that Indian farmers cannot be misled as they are gaining benefit from the irrigation programmes developed on the Indian side of the international border since Independence. (ANI)
