When External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar told Parliament that Punjab has the highest number of human trafficking cases in India, it almost sounded like an achievement—if governance were scored the way cricket teams are. Sadly, this is one “No. 1” ranking that deserves neither applause nor a trophy. Behind it lie mortgaged farms, sold family gold, loans taken from arhtiyas, and young men reduced to human cargo for smugglers.Punjab still tops lists—just not the ones it should take pride in.
Abroad, the mood is relentlessly unforgiving. The United States, under Donald Trump, is preparing to massively expand funding and enforcement to crack down on illegal immigration from 2026 onwards. Borders are tightening, deportation flights are filling up, and sympathy has been formally removed from the policy manual. America’s message is blunt: arrive illegally and prepare to leave faster.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-set-expand-immigration-crackdown-2026-despite-brewing-backlash-2025-12-21
Ironically, this is common knowledge in Punjab’s villages—yet the queues outside travel agents continue to lengthen.Why does the Dunki route still beckon? Because staying back feels like a slower, quieter punishment. Agriculture, once Punjab’s backbone, now resembles nothing but inherited debt. Fragmented landholdings, rising input costs, falling water tables and stagnant returns have turned farming into a loss-making legacy. Education promises escape but delivers frustration degrees are many, jobs are none. Industry, which should have absorbed this workforce, has largely bypassed the state, taking investment and hope elsewhere. Adding to this is the relentless social-media display of success by peers abroad, which only sharpens local frustration and a sense of failure.
Then comes deep decay in society and its values: drugs making the youth hollow, gangsterism creeping into everyday life, and public confidence in law and order steadily eroding. Migration, therefore, is not a cherished dream of the West; it is a desperate exit from a system that offers neither dignity nor direction. When the political class fails its youth and the state, they choose the Dunki route—and the state earns a tragic No. 1 ranking in human trafficking. It is governance by abdication, followed by misplaced happiness for minor remittances.
This despair has bred a ruthless underground industry of human trafficking. Families routinely pay ₹60–80 lakh for illegal passage. Some migrants die en route frozen, dehydrated, abandoned. Others arrive only to be detained and deported, returning home bankrupt and traumatised.
Recent raids by the Enforcement Directorate have exposed how deeply entrenched this trade has become. A Jalandhar-based travel agent—long whispered about locally—was raided in connection with the Dunki route. More disturbing are reports that names of several police officers have surfaced during these investigations.
In Punjab, traffickers don’t hide; institutions blink. Enforcement arrives late, press releases arrive early, and accountability is promised “after due process.” Victims learn quickly that silence is safer than complaints. Parents grieve quietly, unsure whether the system will console them or question them. When policing and profiteering blur, the racket no longer needs secrecy.
No foreign crackdown can fix a problem manufactured at home. Walls, visas and deportations treat symptoms, not causes. The Dunki route does not begin in Mexico or Central America; it begins in Punjab’s villages, classrooms, police stations and employment offices.
That brings us to question Punjab’s political class. This crisis is not accidental; it is cumulative. Elections were fought with slogans, but no solution in vision or in action. Youth were mobilised for rallies, radicalized, not empowered with livelihoods. Unfortunately, migration was glorified, remittances mistaken for development, and governance failures brushed aside. Every young person pushed onto the Dunki route is a report card on leadership of Punjab and it reads FAILED (in capital letters).
Punjab needs agriculture that pays, education that employs, industry that creates local jobs, and policing that restores trust. Until politics stops failing its youth, Punjab will continue exporting its dreams—and importing despair, one deportation flight at a time.