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Share"Personally, I don't support strikes. Bandhs don't help the country," Bhattacharjee said at a business gathering. "Unfortunately, I belong to a political party. They call strikes and I keep mum!" His audience laughed. His party fumed, and would have certainly called another bandh if it wasn't for the fear of being upstaged by a defiant Mamata Banerjee camping at Singur, making faces at the Tatas and the government.
Instead, the ever-vigilant CPM politburo publicly censured Bhattacharjee, who promptly apologised. It may have saved him from being thrown out a la Somnath Chatterjee, but it did not cool tempers. Red leaders huffed and puffed and went on about strikes and bandhs being the democratic rights of the worker.
As one who grew up in West Bengal and saw striking workers and trade unions hound industries away, saw the state plunge into the depths of unemployment and economic distress that it is only now scrambling out of, I can totally understand Bhattacharjee's angst. After decades, the state is witnessing economic growth because of the aggressive pro-reforms stand of the Bengal CPM.
Curiously enough, the Left is probably the only political group that calls a bandh against its own government. And usually it's a 24-hour bandh, not a 12-hour bandh which makes the same point but is less harrowing for common folk. Both Kerala and West Bengal have been reeling from hartals, driving possible investors away. Kerala even had a 'hartal week' in February -- there was a strike every day of a week for some reason or other. An exasperated AP Abdullakutty, CPM MP from Kerala, said the bandh had lost its edge as a mode of protest and one had to find other ways of raising public demands. Hordes of comrades dutifully leapt on him, trying to bite his head off.
Apart from the natural discomfort with the communists' hostility to free thought, I have other problems with this bandh-as-basic-right logic. First, strikes and bandhs are not synonymous. A strike affects one sector (like the bus service oran industry) whereas a bandh paralyses life, holds the general public hostage, hitting out at the powers-that-be by punishing the masses. A strike may be a weapon of the downtrodden, but a bandh is always the weapon of the bully.
Second, bandhs disrupt life to the extent that people can't get medical attention. The sick suffer needlessly, the seriously sick die. To me, any weapon of protest that dishonours the right to life and gains mileage out of others' suffering is hateful. A strike may be fine in itself, but I cannot think of one civilised nation where political parties or trade unions dare to justify deaths and severe distress of citizens as necessary to voice protest. One cannot wish away the fundamental rights and freedoms of others.
Third, the Bengal Left is very different from the rest of the Indian Left -- uninterrupted power for over 30 years has changed it. It is now more ruling class than proletariat.
While CPM ideologues can afford to be the eternal rebels (or the Opposition within the ruling UPA), leaders in Bengal have more at stake. Unlike their comrades elsewhere, paralysing the state to get attention doesn't work for them -- it cuts off the money flow, shoos off investors, exasperates the public and endangers their throne. The Bengal CPIM needs good governance and economic growth. It cannot ignore the responsibility that comes with power. And at some point it has to stand up and bellow, "Bandh karo ye natak!"
The writer is Editor, The Little Magazine. Email: sen@littlemag.com
