BANDH: Beer And New Dvds @ Home

The 12-hour Bharat Bandh called by the Opposition parties to protest the fuel price hike and rising inflation disrupted economic activities with commodity markets and the transport sector taking a hit in many parts of the country. The industry pegged losses at up to Rs 13,000 crore. This gets us to wonder if we do that kind of profit everyday. If so, where does it go?
Senior BJP leader L K Advani on Tuesday hoped that the strike called against price rise would put an end to criticism that the opposition was not doing enough on the issue.
"Through you (the media) I would like to thank the people of the country for making Bharat Bandh an unprecedented success. I would also like to thank the people of Delhi and our supporters here for this success," he said.
The question that lingers in my mind is whom did the Bandh actually benefit and in what way? How do we categorize a Bandh as success?
Corporate companies, to whom a 12-hour Bandh would mean loss in millions of dollars, got employees to stay back overnight and continued work beneath closed doors.
Urban educated enjoyed extended weekend (with plenty of beer and DVDs). Students had their day off and spent time on Facebook and videogames. Elderly spent time in family get together.
There were a few who actually did not know the reason for which the Bandh had been called.
We heard of incidents of stray violence, which I am sure was organized to ensure some impact of the Bandh. Throughout the 12 hour period there was a casual calm among every one. Many were glued to the TV curious to see if there are any signs of violence and get updates on Dhoni’s wedding.
Industry leaders including Rahul Bajaj and Adi Godrej have coined the right terms for this Bandh by calling it "odd and absurd". The middle class who are affected by the price rise did not care about the Bandh or about the reason behind the Bandh. The upper classes are not affected, so they did not care. The ones who were affected were the lower classes especially the daily wagers, who are not only burdened by price rise but also by loss of a day’s wages. Ruling Congress/UPA did not care because they want to burden Aam Aadmi for India’s growth. Opposition parties did not care because there is nothing much to gain right now, considering that elections are far far away. Today, these Bandhs and strikes are a pantomime, caricatures of a protest.

Right up to the turn of the century, there were successful movements for bringing down prices, both among farmers and the middle classes. In the ’60s, Bombay housewives came out onto the streets banging their utensils against price rise; a decade earlier, Calcuttans successfully protested against a one-paisa increase in tram fares. The trams are still there but the Communists and trade unionists who led great hartals on economic issues are in danger of being phased out. And in this century we don’t have farmer protests but farmer suicides. D. Raja, the CPI leader who was recently described as the “poorest member” of the Rajya Sabha with zero assets, admits “there is a problem in getting people out on bread-and-butter issues as the middle class that once led the protests no longer does so”.

The public is inconvenienced for a day as a scraggly band of political workers disrupts life but you will not find the commoner joining in spontaneously. There is no expectation from netas across the political spectrum, no hope of relief. Instead, there is a weary cynicism and a tight squeeze on household budgets of the middle class while the unorganized poor continue to fall off the map with their already inferior diet getting even more diminished.
Its more than co-incidence that JP Narayan is not alive today!