In Punjab’s border belt schools have reopened but people have not been officially told to return home. They are doing it at their own risk. The next time the Union Home Ministry tells the border residents to leave their homes for safer places, it would be taken less seriously. This is dangerous because the next time the threat of war may not be as unreal as it has turned out to be this time. It is amazing how casually an important order resulting in the displacement of lakhs of people in the states bordering Pakistan has been passed even though it has been possibly done in good faith. The BSF says it did not ask for such an order. There was no military deployment along the border. After Pakistan’s denial on the surgical strikes, chances of a conflict receded. Did the Home Ministry rely on unreliable intelligence and overreact? Was there a political motive?  For the people in the border villages leaving homes at such a short notice is a costly affair. Already their modest financial resources are overstretched in the struggle for survival. In addition, the sudden announcement inflicted on them emotional discomfort. A familiar fear gripped them — the fear of losing all that they had accumulated and built over the years. One order threatened their lifetime savings. None in the administration had a clue about what was going on. None of their elected representatives came to tell them where to go and for how long.When immediately after the surgical strikes Home Minister Rajnath Singh told Parkash Singh Badal to get the border villages vacated, the Punjab Chief Minister did not bother to ask questions. He simply followed the brief diktat. Badal spent the next few days listening to problems of the uprooted as if he had just arrived from another planet. Anyone of his age living in Punjab is familiar with the pain of dislocation and homelessness. Punjabis have suffered the pangs of Partition and experienced the scourge of war. At this hour people need concrete help, not politicians’ visits and questions about their well-being. Followed by photographers, Badal replayed his familiar “sangat darshan” political game.