Hindustan Times, September 21, 1999
Travel agents rob Pehowa of its youth, money
Prashant Saxena (Pehowa (Haryana), September 20)
WHEN KARTAR Chand, 19, left his village Dabkheri for Malaysia about two months ago, he was walking on air because he had been promised a lucrative job there. Today, he is back home, broken and traumatised after having chased a non-existent pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Kartar's father sold for Rs 1.5 lakh half of the two acres of fertile land that the family owned to pay for his son's passport, ticket and the "agent's commission". Kartar barely escaped the clutches of his Malaysian agent, who had tried to detain him as a "bonded labourer".
Kartar, his two brothers and their father are now "caretakers" of the land they sold. Its new owner is Surjit Singh, the fly-by-night agent (Kurukshetra-based for a time) who "arranged" for Kartar's non-existent job in Malaysia and fleeced him dry.
Kartar is just one of thousands of gullible villagers in this district that borders Punjab. Its highly fertile land produces world class basmati rice, apart from wheat and sugarcane. Unscrupulous travel agents arrange for fake work permits, phantom jobs and herd thousands of unsuspecting youngsters to Germany, France, Italy, Belgium and Malaysia.
Many STD-ISD telephone booths in Kurukshetra actually have a variety of clocks showing the local time of state capitals world-wide.
But for every youngman who has made it to a distant El Dorado, there are virtually thousands like Kartar who haven't.
In neighbouring Satora village alone about 150 youngsters from as many families are abroad. In each case, the family has had to part with their land. And for those waiting to leave, agents have already been paid anywhere between Rs 1 lakh and Rs 7 lakh.
Visit any village in the Pehowa-Kurukshetra belt, you'll find innumerable cases of deceit, forgery and deportation. But to get the victims to talk about the "agents" who duped them is no easy task. Nobody wants to part with information. The ones who speak up are those who have given up hope of getting back their money or their land and have actually dared to file complaints.
"Why don't you go to Tikam Singh in Pehowa or Sartaj Singh in Morthali with an advance amount of 10 per cent? They'll help you go abroad," says a daily wage-earner of village Satora. "They have already made Rs 50-60 lakh and are not seen much now", says another. Just how much one has to pay to go abroad is arbitrarily decided.
The current rate for European countries is Rs 4 lakh, for US Rs 7 lakh and for Malaysia about Rs 1.5 lakh. "But there will be no receipts", says Arvinder of village Morthali.
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