Arshdeep Arshi

Sinchita Parbat

Video Editor

Pratishtha Pandya

Editor

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“Eh kise
hor nu jita rahe ne, sade agge koi hor kudi nahi si
[They are making someone else win, there was no other girl ahead of
us].” Athletes Jaspal, Ramadeep and friends are complaining to their coach in one voice. The dozen young runners from Amritsar district travelled 200 kilometres to participate in a marathon in Chandigarh, and they are visibly
agitated. All this is happening even as the name of Jaspal Kaur is being announced from the stage as winner of the second prize in the five kilometre race. They know Jaspal is the
winner, not runner-up, as she was leading all the way to the finishing line. But the cash prize of Rs. 5,000 for the winner is being announced in someone else’s name. 



Jaspal
refuses to go to the stage and accept the second prize, instead she and her
coach go from one person to another on and off the stage, questioning the
decision of the organisers, narrating their story and seeking help to address the injustice. In the end at the
request of her coach Jaspal accepts the second prize, a giant foam board cheque
with the figure of Rs. 3,100 written on it. 



A month
later in April 2023 to her surprise, Jaspal finds Rs. 5,000 has been deposited in her
account. Nothing is explained to Jaspal and nothing has been reported in
any local newspapers. On the result website of Runizen timing systems, her name appears as the winner on the leaderboard for the five-kilometre race with a guntime (race time) of 23.07 minutes.
She is not there in the prize distribution photographs for the year. But Jaspal
still holds the giant cheque in her possession along with her many medals.



In 2024
while accompanying the girls to the next marathon, this reporter found out from the
organisers that they had disqualified Jaspal’s competitor
in the race later that year after examining the video footage. They realised the protesting girls had been right. There was some cheating that had taken
place with the race bib. That explained the mystery of the cash prize money that
came to Jaspal.



Cash prizes
are important to Jaspal. If she can save enough money she can go to college again.
Two years ago, Jaspal joined an online B.A. programme in a private
university. “But I have not been able to finish beyond the first semester,” she
says. “I have to pay about 15 thousand rupees every semester to sit in the exam. In
the first semester I used the money from cash awards [given by village
representatives and the school for winning nationals] to pay the fees. But
after that I could not complete another semester since I didn’t have any
money.” 



Jaspal, 22, is a first-generation college goer
in her family and among the very few women from the Mazhabi Sikh
community in her village, classified as most disadvantaged Scheduled Caste
community in Punjab. Jaspal’s mother Baljinder Kaur, 47, studied till Class 5
and her father Balkar Singh, 50, has never been to school. Her older brother
Amritpal Singh, 24, dropped out after Class 12 to help her father in construction labour around their village Kohali; her younger brother
Akashdeep Singh,17, has completed Class 12.

The income
of the family that now includes her elder brother’s wife and child as well, depends
on the frequency of work that the two men find, which is often unpredictable.
Things look a little bright when they have work, and they make anything between
Rs. 9,000 - 10,000 a month. 

The prize
money that Jaspal gets often takes care of some of her expenses like entry fees
and travel for competitions, and her own education. “We get
t-shirts when we register for races but for shorts, tracksuit pants and shoes,
we have to ask our parents for money,” she says as she is donning her sports clothes for the practice on the
ground. 



Around us we see young athletes, some doing  warm-ups, others taking
a slow round of the ground and a few are gathered around their coach Rajinder
Singh for daily training. All
of them come from different villages. Jaspal has
been participating in 400 and 800 metres, and five-kms events, and has won many prizes
and medals in the last seven years. In her own village Jaspal has come to be an inspiration for many. Her
medals, certificates and cash prizes have encouraged many from poor families to
put their kids in training.  



But for
Jaspal, nothing she has won till now has been enough to help the family. Since February
2024, Jaspal has started commuting to do account keeping in a Gaushala near Amritsar
for Rs. 8,000 a month. “I took up this job to contribute to my family’s income.
But now I don’t even get time to study,” she says.  



She knows that with the responsibilities at home
even the salary from the new job is still short of the semester fees money she
needs. In March 2024 she once again decides to run in a 10-kms race in
Chandigarh. This time she ends up as a second runner-up and wins a cash prize
of Rs. 11,000.

She certainly
is a ‘star’ in the group of about 70 athletes that Rajinder
Singh Chhina (60) is training for free in Harse Chhina village. An
international athlete himself in the 1500m event, he has been training young
girls and boys from marginalised communities for more than a decade now.

A taunt from a senior officer
in Chandigarh about widespread drug-abuse among youngsters in rural Punjab, pushed
this athlete to start training young kids in 2003. “I brought the kids to
this ground first,” he says, referring to the playground of Comrade Acchar
Singh Chhina Government Senior Secondary Smart School in Harse Chinna village
in Amritsar. “The children that were not in the school – children of labourers,
marginalised sections. I got them admitted in the school, started training
them and slowly it grew.



“In government schools, there
are many kids from the marginalised sections now. They are hard-working and
strong. I started forming teams thinking that they should at least go till the
state level. I didn’t have time to offer sewa at the Gurudwara. I
believe that one should help the children in their education if one can,” says
Rajinder. 



“I have at least 70 athletes
whom I coach. Some of my athletes have done quite well and secured good jobs.
Some are in Pro Kabaddi League,” Chhina proudly says. “We do not get any help
from anyone. People visit, honour the kids, promise to help but nothing comes
out of it. We do whatever we can on our own,” he says. 



He holds a BAMS degree and runs his own clinic in Ram Tirath near
Amritsar. He says the income from that is enough to cover the expenses of his
home and the ground. “I spend some seven to eight thousand rupees a month on equipment –
hurdles, weights, lime to mark the ground etc.” His children, three of them,
all grown up and working, also contribute from time to time. 



“I don’t want any kids to do
drugs. I want them to come to the ground so that they become something.”

Coming to the ground,
however, is quite an effort for young Jaspal, whose village Kohali is about
10 kilometres away. “I struggle with the distance. The village is far away from
the ground,” Jaspal says sitting in front of her two-room brick house on the
outskirts of her village. “It takes me about 45 minutes to walk to the ground each
way,” Jaspal says. “I get up at 3:30 in the morning every day. I will be at the ground at 4:30. My parents tell me to be careful, but I never feel unsafe. There is an
akhara nearby where boys practice pehalwani [wrestling]. Because of
them, the road is never deserted. We practice for two hours, and I walk home
around 7.30 in the morning,” she says.



Two years ago, she learnt to
ride her father’s secondhand bike. Since that time, she occasionally gets to
take the motorbike to the training ground, which is then only a matter of 10
minutes. But many times, on those lucky days, Jaspal has to leave
the training halfway and return home urgently, because the men at home need the
bike. She has missed a few training sessions like that.



“There are still some villages where there is no government or private
bus service,” the coach says. “The young athletes struggle to reach
the ground and many of them struggle with their education as well because of
this.”  The absence of a college nearby
is also a reason why many girls in these villages drop out after Class 12. The
nearest bus-station to Jaspal is on the other side of the village. And getting
the buses that take her to the ground at the time she needs to reach is another
problem, she explains. 



Ramandeep Kaur, another young
athlete from the same village, also walks 10 kms, twice a day, to attend
the training. “Sometimes, I walk five kilometres and then go to the ground on a scooty [gearless bike], with another girl, Komalpreet
from
Chainpur village. After training I walk back another five kilometres,” she
explains.



“Darr tan lagda ikalle aunde-jande, par kise kol
time nahi nal jan aun layi [I fear walking alone to and fro, especially in
the dark but no one in the family has the time to go with me every day],” says
Ramandeep. The training and then the extra 20 kms walks take a toll on
her. “I am tired all the time,” she says.

Also, her work does not end with training for her runs, the 21-year-old
also has to help at home, taking care of a cow and a buffalo that the family
owns. Right in front of the house beyond a 3-4 feet wide brick road is a small
space where they keep their cattle.



Ramandeep is also from the Mazhabi Sikh community. Her family of 10 survives on the income of two brothers, who work as
labourers. “They do largely carpentry work or
anything else that comes their way as often as it does. When they do find work,
each can earn anything around 350 rupees a day,” she says. 



She gave up studies after completing Class 12 in 2022, when her father
died. “We could not afford it,” she says regretfully, sitting in her two-room
house at the far end of the village, with cracked walls. “My mother buys me the
sports clothes, she gets the widow pension of 1,500 rupees,” says Ramandeep.



“Cash prize jitt ke shoes laye si 3100 de, hun tutt gaye, fer koi
race jittungi te shoes laungi [I bought these shoes when I won a cash prize
of 3,100 rupees in a race, these are torn now, I will win a race again and then buy
shoes],” she says pointing at her rugged shoes she has been using now. Shoes,
or no shoes, she runs to get to a better place from where she is right now. 



“I run to secure a job in the police force,” Ramandeep says. 



And so do Komalpreet Kaur (15) from Chainpur,
Gurkirpal Singh (15) from village Kohali, Manpreet Kaur (20) from village
Ranewali and Mamta (20) from village Sainsra Kalan. All of them come to get
trained under coach Chhina. For each of these young athletes, apart from a
changed social status, a government job means financial security for the entire
family. But entrance exams for these jobs are yet another hurdle race.

The special three per cent quota scheme for sportspersons requires winning
championship trophies at the state and national level, which requires access to
different kinds of resources. In the absence of those the girls work hard and
run five and 10 kms races in various marathons across the state.
The prizes and medals they win would help them in the physical fitness tests
for the jobs in the police force they aspire to. 



There is even a reservation for Mazhabi Sikhs in these jobs. A 180 among out of the total 1,746 vacancies advertised for
constables in the Punjab police for candidates in the 2024 state recruitment
drive are reserved for this SC community. And 72 out of the 180 seats are
reserved for women in the same community. 




<a href="https://indiajusticereport.org">The 2022
India Justice Report</a> that assesses and ranks each state’s progress
in capacity building for its major justice delivery mechanisms, namely Police,
Judiciary, Prisons &amp; Legal Aid, shows that Punjab has dropped eight ranks
from 4th to 12th between 2019 and 2022. The report adds that
“whether it is caste or gender, everywhere there is a shortfall in inclusion
and the pace of repair remains glacial. Despite decades of heated debate, while
individual states may meet one or other category, no state meets all three
quotas across all subsystems. Nor are women anywhere near parity. It has taken
fifteen years, from January 2007 to January 2022, for the share of women
personnel in police to move from 3.3 per cent to 11.8 per cent.” That number
for women in Punjab in 2022 is at 9.9 per cent.



Both Jaspal and Ramandeep have been applying for the
Punjab police constable post since last year. In 2023 they both appeared for
the written test in Punjabi but did not clear it. &quot;I prepare for the written test
at home,” says Ramandeep. 



The 2024 advertisement for the recruitment drive
mentions a computer-based exam as the first in the three-stage selection
process. The candidates from the Scheduled Caste and Backward Class must have minimum required marks of 35 per cent to qualify for second round of physical
screening test and a physical measurement test. The physical tests include
running, long-jump, high jump, weight and height.

Ramandeep’s mother is anxious about her daughter’s performance because
she does not eat much, she says. She knows little about The Athletics
Federation of India’s <a href="https://indianathletics.in/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/IAAF-Practical-Guide-to-Nutrition-May-2013.pdf">guidebook</a> on nutrition that recommends a varied diet of
vegetables, fruits, beans, legumes, cereals, lean meats, fish and dairy foods
to meet young athletes nutrition and energy needs. They cannot afford much of
these. Meat comes once a month. “Diet nahi mildi, bas roti ja jo vi ghare
mil janda [We don’t get proper diet; it is chapaati or whatever is cooked
at home],” says Ramandeep. “We eat whatever is cooked at home, and soaked
chane,” Jaspal adds. 



Neither of the girls know about the
computer-based exam mentioned in the advertisement this year. “Last year it was
a written test in Punjabi, not computer-based,” says Jaspal remembering her
earlier experience. “We do not have access to computers.” Last year Jaspal had spent Rs. 3,000 on
coaching for two months to help her clear the written test. 



The first round according to this year’s
circular will include a paper in addition to the qualifying paper on Punjabi
language. It will test the candidates on general awareness, quantitative
aptitude and numerical skills, mental ability and logical reasoning, English
language skills, Punjabi language skills and digital literacy and
awareness.  



&quot;Physical test written test
clear hon ton baad lainde ne, written test hi clear nahi si hoya is karke
physical test tak pohnche hi nahi [Physical test is conducted after
you pass the written test, when you are not able to clear the written exam,
where is the question of the physical test to be conducted]?&quot; says Jaspal.
 



“I
have the books from last year. This year also I have applied [for the police
force vacancies],” says Ramandeep. “Let us see,&quot; she adds, her voice choked
with an equal amount of doubt and hope.

When life is a long-distance race

پنجاب کے گاؤوں کی خواتین ایتھلیٹوں کی جدوجہد

வாழ்க்கை நெடும் பயணம் ஆகும்போது

ଜୀବନ ଯେଉଁଠି ଏକ ଲମ୍ବା ଦୌଡ଼

ജീവിതം ഒരു ദീർഘദൂര ഓട്ടമാവുമ്പോൾ

ಬದುಕೇ ದೂರ ದಾರಿಯ ಓಟವಾದಾಗ

ज़िंदगी की दौड़ में भागतीं महिला एथलीट

જિંદગી જ એક લાંબી-દોડ હોય ત્યારે...

जिनगी के लंबा दऊड़

जिनगी के मैदान में लम्बा दौड़ के खिलाड़ी

জীবন যেখানে লম্বা রেসের এক গল্প

যেতিয়া জীৱনটো হৈ পৰে এক সুদীৰ্ঘ দৌৰ

ਜ਼ਿੰਦਗੀ ਹੀ ਜਦ ਲੰਬੀ ਰੇਸ ਹੋਵੇ

Kohali, Ajnala Tahsil, Amritsar District, Punjab, India

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When life is a long-distance race

Young girls from Scheduled Caste communities in Punjab have a longer track to cover when it comes to reaching their goal of a secure job. Poverty, caste identity, lack of nutrition and limited education opportunities only add to their gendered struggle

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