Our country witnessed another pointless Bharat bandh yesterday. Opposition parties led by Congress came together to organise a nationwide bandh to protest against the centre for the recent petrol price hike. The bandh was said to be an organised protest for the ‘common man’s misery’, but it ended up making the life of an ordinary man, who is already in distress, more inconvenient.
I come from Kerala, where bandhs and hartals have been celebrated for a long time. People stand in queues at chicken shops and beverage outlets, the day before to celebrate. When I decided to step out of the state, I realised that it’s not the same everywhere. If you shut down cities and towns, it also means that you are shutting down the revenue earning capacity of the state to support the majority of its people.
Politically supported violence?
In India, you will often find the opposition parties staging protests against the government for their bad decisions as a matter of public concern, but what they don’t realise is that it should be a non-violent protest, without causing any inconvenience to the public. The bandh was not reflective of the spirit of people in any way. It was hijacked by violent elements destroying shops and public transport in various cities. I could see that every shopkeeper was waiting for the protest to end ao that they could reopen their shops, as most of them can’t afford the shop to remain shut suffering a day’s loss.
No citizen deserves to remain indoors or close their business fearing violence; this feeling had permeated in the mind of every citizen in this country due to which they did not step out yesterday. However, this doesn’t mean that they gave consent to carry out the protest.
The opposition failed to curb violence
First, the opposition failed to reach out to the people and declare that they will not allow the kind of violence. There is no point in washing your hands off after you see it happening. The common man should know that no political party supports any kind of violence. The government, both at the centre and state, should take a stance to ban bandhs or hartals. They should restrict anyone to carry out protests that bring the entire country to a standstill. You can’t bring the state to its knees; you are at this moment restricting the right to livelihood, which is a fundamental right.
The Supreme Court has issued orders banning Hartals and Bandhs in the past, but no government in power has bothered to enforce them effectively. Kerala High Court in the Bharat Kumar v. the State of Kerala, AIR 1997 Ker 291 (FB), judgment, declared a bandh as unconstitutional. The same was upheld by Supreme court saying that there cannot be any right to call or enforce a “bandh” which interferes with the exercise of the fundamental freedoms of other citizens, in addition to causing loss to the public exchequer in many ways.
It’s time we should voice for a ban of bandh and hartals. We had a horrible day where hospitals, ambulances and medical shops were shut, where a 2-year-old died in an ambulance. Amid protests, petrol is retailing at Rs 80.73 a litre and diesel at Rs 72.83 a litre in New Delhi. The opposition parties didn’t attain anything other than political mileage and causing great inconvenience to the civilians because of the protest which was ironically carried out for them.