Backing bandhs
April 29, 2010: The Indian Express
The cruellest aspect of a bandh is perhaps not the harassment and intimidation (even assault) of law-abiding, hardworking citizens wherever working or travelling during a bandh is not a voluntary, democratic choice. It is the cruel paradox of what’s enjoyed by some as another holiday (as in Kolkata, where interspersed with marching, picketing, vandalising cadres one sees streets and stretches of main roads taken over by a game of cricket, or a family picnic just about anywhere), and the same unleashing break-ins and forced shutdowns at schools, thrashing of stranded, sick passengers on trains and platforms, flights unable to take off and hapless crowds perching atop luggage, empty offices, scattered and lonely policemen (who feign helplessness at cadre charges at private vehicles) — not the very picture of a world turned upside down; it is the world turned upside down.
Tuesday’s 12-hour “Bharat Bandh¶ — called by 13 parties, including the Left and major regional players like AIADMK, BJD, SP, RJD, TDP — against price rise and the hike in petrol, diesel and fertiliser prices, expectedly, did not achieve its stated “economic¶ objective. But in the usually suspect states — West Bengal and Kerala — it caused real, and routine, economic damage by closing offices and businesses, by disrupting train, road transport and aviation services. In certain other states too — Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh — the bandh made an impact, as it partly did in Haryana, Andhra Pradesh and the Northeast.
However, there are no doubts harboured about most of these “other¶ states getting back on their feet immediately afterwards and allowing a significant stretch of time to lapse before the next bandh. But for Bengal and Kerala, the question is: how many weeks, or days, before they again completely abstain from work? One look at the locked seat of government in Kolkata — the Writers’ Buildings — on Tuesday, and hope would die. After all, these are states where shutdowns are enforced by those governing them. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s dream of a resurgent Bengal proved to be a pipe dream, checkmated by the ghost in his machine — his party (with a lot of help of course from its rival, the Trinamool). Why wonder then that we don’t hear loud sighs of despair from Bengal at its figures of man-day loses? Anybody who calls a bandh, anywhere in India, should study the case of Bengal and learn how this tool achieves nothing, not even public endorsement of its political goal. It ends up being a darkly comic holiday. Meanwhile, real damage aggregates behind statistics of loss, damage which should shame a globalising, growing economy.
