In Punjab elections, claims and counter-claims, allegations and counter-allegations are making news. In the heart of Malwa (southern Punjab), which sends more than half of the legislators to the state Assembly, there is an issue affecting many lives and has already claimed thousands of lives, but is yet to become a serious poll issue.
This area has become a “cancer belt”. Move in any direction from Bathinda and there is no village which does not have a story to tell about its fight against cancer and the lives lost to it.
In Gheribhagi village on Talwani Sabho-Bathinda Road, Sukhdev Singh has a ramshackle clinic. at first glance it can be mistaken for a motor garage, but for a stethoscope and a few faded boxes of tablets.
The village has a strange deathly silence about it. The village has lost around 50 people to cancer in last seven-eight years. “Even now there are around 20 people in our village who are suffering from cancer. Most of them have stomach or renal cancer,” says Sukhdev Singh, who is a pharmacist.
The former sarpanch of the village, Joginder Singh, has three children in his family who are born blind. “There is some problem in our water, but we don’t know what it is,” he says.
As other people join in for a discussion, they say that there is no treatment in Bathinda for cancer patients.
People from the area travel to Bikaner in neighbouring Rajasthan for treatment, and the situation is so alarming that the train carrying cancer patients from Malwa is being called “Cancer Express” in Rajasthan.
A study by the World Health Organisation has shown that a high level of nirate and traces of uranium are present in water.
The Akali-BJP government started the much-hyped reverse osmosis project for the area, but it has mainly benefited the villages of the chief minister’s constituency of Lambi.
Punjab Congress president Amarinder Singh recently announced that if voted to power they will open cancer hospitals in Bathinda so that people do have not to go out of state for treatment.