Terrorism in Punjab : Understanding reality at the grass-roots level

The terrorist movement in Punjab has drawn the attention of a large number of social scientists. Most of the recent works depend upon the secondary sources for the explanation of what is commonly known as the Punjab problem. The present article is an attempt to investigate the situation at grass-roots level with the help of field investigation. It examines, in a limited way, the views that agrarian development of Punjab and a large number of educated unemployed rural youth have been responsible for terrorism in Punjab. For the purpose the data have been collected from the villages of Amritsar District. On the basis of the findings of the empirical study it has been argued that there is a gap between the grassroots level reality and the general impressions about terrorism in Punjab.