India, Aug. 3 -- Artist Kulwinder Singh was driving from his village in Sangrur to Chandigarh when he observed road accidents caused by the obscuring smoke screen of paddy stubble infernos. Though hailing from a farmer's home, the young man's sensitivity liberated him from the corral of his ancestry. A thought flashed in his inner eye: "Burning does not just adversely affect us farmers by way of health hazards, environmental pollution, destruction of biodiversity helpful to soil such as worms and the earth's destruction. But also people unconnected to farming." Singh is of the conviction that art must reach beyond the decorative to "disturb" and send ripples through a stagnating social conscience. He conceived a painting from that 'driving' thought. It smoulders, and arrests the gaze. It was on prime display at the annual exhibition of the Chandigarh Lalit Kala Akademi. It is of an elderly farmer with an oxygen mask. The scarecrow behind him also clamped with a breathing filter. Wisps of burnt stubble settle on the wizened farmer's white kurta, like indelible black curses. "It is an aesthetic depiction of a warning: that the farmer is on ventilator support. The terminal stage. If not heeded, we will have committed suicide," Singh, an art teacher in a Chandigarh school, told this writer. The painting is rich in cultural symbolism. In the kurta's upper pocket is a bulging wallet depicting a man of wealth. "However, my artwork evokes the message: wealth will not be able to prevent the looming destruction to the self and to environment," Singh added. The young artist is critical of the self: "It is not enough to say farmers burn stubble because it is cheap and Government provides no alternative. We must evolve from the destructive paddy cycle, which has also depleted the water table." The artwork whispers of the ironies that wrack the soul of contemporary Punjab: obsessed with blasphemy but oblivious to the scriptures steeped in the vision of environmental preservation, of symbols and rituals accorded precedence over principles....