"India lives in her villages, India’s five hundred thousand villages portray an overwhelming diversity of form, style, custom and ritual. Villages are the repositories of culture in India; they are the roots of all society. The majority of India has always been rural, not urban. Rural farmers are the food producers and the urban population depends on them for their survival. They are the founders of civilization" Such stereotype views have often been expressed by sociologists and economists alike.

In an article "Urbanization of the Sikhs in India" published in The Sikh Review, December 99 issue, Dr. MS Gill discussed the low level of Sikh’s urbanization (page 81) that acted as a stumbling block in their socio-economic development of large majority of rural Sikhs (Page 83). The author suggested "higher level of urbanization" by Sikhs as compared to Hindus so that they are better placed in terms of education facilities and other infrastructure in urban areas.

Pastoral Background: Sikh religion has been essentially rural based. The development of our religion took place in rural Punjab. One of the important concepts of Sikh religion is that man should live in harmony with himself, with society and with nature so as to achieve spirituality and happiness. This can be achieved not in cities but in rural environment and that is why our Gurus lived and preached in Rural Punjab. At present 70 to 80 percent of the Sikhs who are the backbone of Sikhism live in rural Punjab.

Sikh way of life is based on relative simplicity, typifying simple living and high thinking. Our Gurus and many world renowned philosophers and religious leaders believed in such life which can only be practiced in rural setting.

Gandhi was attracted by the concept of the simple society of Tolstoy and Ruskin who advocated that the life should be built on manual labour in a communitarian order. Gandhian system does not advocate transferring population from agriculture to industry. He advocated that villages must get more importance than the cities for social and economic development.

Unemployment: It is believed that by transferring population from the traditional agriculture sector to industrial sector, the problem of unemployment is solved. To equate improvement of quality of human life with urbanization is a myth which is leading to serious distortion in socioeconomic development planning in developing countries.

What will a Sikh villager, without basic education and skills, do in cities. He will not even be able to compete with migrant Behari labor in rikhsaw pulling. He will either become a vagabond, pavement dweller or urban life will be temptation for him to commit crime. Removal of hunger and poverty in villages will not force villagers to migrate to cities in a destitute condition and work under exploitative and inhuman conditions.

Rural masses after migrating to cities need living space. With no money to purchase land or pay for the rent they squat on whatever space is available, resulting in large number of encroachments and unauthorized colonies and growth of slums, giving rise to a breed of criminals called as "Land Mafia" who have become the real developers of haphazard growth in cities.

Accumulation of people in cities create accumulation of social problems: the more the people the more problems. Migration of villagers to cities will add to these problems.

Culture of Crime: People in the cities are already facing many serious social and economic problems which they are not able to resolve. Social disintegration has taken place in many large cities where people have to live with crime, filth, pollution, congestion, overcrowding and in sanitary and unhealthy conditions, Pollution in inner cities of Punjab is much more than the dangerous level resulting in serious health problems.

A news item "Water Unsafe in region" published in Sunday, Tribune 21-11-99 is reproduced below:

Cities, instead of creating communities, are developing shopping centers and, instead of citizens with civic sense, consumers are being created.

Out cities suffer from racial and ethnic segregation. In the past most of the communal riots have taken place in cities.

Mafias: Organized crime in India is on the rise. We regularly hear of many type of mafias, such as land mafia, gambling mafia, lottery mafia, and so on. Organized crime started from Mumbai and is now fast spreading to other cities. The Mumbai underworlds dons have become "role models" for other mafia leaders in the country. Extortion, kidnappings for ransom, gun running, illicit trafficking in women and children, narcotics trade, money laundering, bank scams and every kind of cheating and frauds are taking place in Indian cities.

Life in cities is so busy and mechanical that there is practically no face to face social interaction, with the result that people lead lonely and selfish life. Human relations have become superficial and shallow. There is no more Community feeling, brotherhood and human bondage.

Culture-Vulture: Cities in India have developed the so call "Modern Culture" based on Western culture, which has replaced real happiness with fun, excitement, glamour and thrill. In this so called "Moder culture" of cities there is no society, no family, no community, no moral values, no co-operative and collective way of living. Every one acts as individual in its own vested interest, promoting individualism resulting in greed, lust and selfishness. It is becoming difficult to practice religion in such a society.

In this "Modern Culture" which is also "Consumerist Culture", false and wrong expectations are created through media and advertisements to trap the citizens in consumerism. Failure to achieve these expectations leads to frustration resulting in anger, depression, gambling, alcohol and drug abuse, mental disorders, stress, tension, debt trap, child abuse, domestic violence, and similar other social problems leading to mental and physical degeneration.

Why should Sikhs move to cities facing the above mentioned and other social problems? Why can educational facilities and infrastructure available in cities not be provided in villages? If the basic human needs of food, shelter, clothing, education, health care and pollution-free environment are provided in rural areas there will be no need for the rural population to migrate to cities. The reason for not providing these facilities is that cities were given priority for social and economic development because urban people can organize, protest and fight against the rulers. Moreover, they formed vote banks for the politicians. Instead of urbanization of Sikhs it will be more appropriate to demand social and economic development in Rural areas. This can be achieved provided our leaders have the will to do so.

There is general impression that socio-economic development is the duty of the state; our political leaders have failed to do anything for the village. Rural Punjab has been totally neglected for socio-economic development. Focal Points in rural Punjab to provide infrastructure for the village were promised by S. Parkash Singh Badal right from the time he came in power, but little was done to achieve this. Funds allotted for rural developments were misused/misallocated. All benefits of rural developments were enjoyed by rich and influential farmers.

Non-governmental Internvetion: If Government agencies are not paying attention to Rural development, why can not NGO’s, like SGPC and other Sikh institutions help? They have the resources for rural development. But these bodies also have concentrated more on city developments. Money spent on opening a Dental college in Amritsar by SGPC, where there is already a Government Dental college, could have been used to start 100 primary schools in villages. Rural development in Punjab also suffered due to disunity, factional/ group differences and fight between Sikh priesthood and politicians.

The rich farmers and big landlord have already moved to the cities and have joined the "Parasite" class, leading to unSikh way of life, and keep themselves busy in vulgar display of their wealth. They get culturally corrupted. Their children study in private public English medium schools where there is more emphasis on Western culture and thought (So called Modern Culture) and the students are cut off completely from their traditional Punjabi culture and Sikh way of life.

Consumerist Trap: Middle class of rural Punjab are in the process of moving to the cities and are getting trapped in consumerist culture which is developed through consumerism, which breeds unhappiness, dissatisfaction, selfishness, individualism and craze for luxury goods. Possession of material goods, gadgets, cheap entertainment to provide sensual pleasure and instant gratification are some of the features of this culture. In this culture, instead of "Kirt kamai" (Work Ethic) earning easy money by any means and living on unearned income has become status symbol. Instead of "Wand chhakna" (Economic equality) greed and selfishness has become the order of the day. Collective and cooperative way of living, family and joint family systems have been replaced with individualism. The autonomy of rural Sikh way of life is being destroyed.

Social scientists in many countries are making efforts to protect the rural base and saving villages. The biggest people’s movement to save the villages is in progress in Finland where villages are being remodeled, made attractive, socially rewarding and agreeable places to stop migration from the villagers. This is being achieved by Voluntary team work of hundreds of village committees.

Let me, in this context, quote a verse from "The Deserted Village" famous poem written by poet Oliver Goldsmith in 1770 :

This poem "The Deserted Village" was written in 1770 when the village farmers were eaten away by the "Sheep" (Land farming was replaced by sheep rearing for producing and exporting wool). Let not our cities eat away the rural farmers and create "deserted villages."

Instead of indiscriminate urbanization, let us protect the moral values of the rural culture by carrying social and economic development of our villages for which the government and the community have the resources.