People's Democracy

THE grossly unreasonable bandh called on January 10 by the SUCI and a splinter group of Naxalites, and duly supported by the down-in-the-dumps Trinamul Congress, proved a flop, as was expected. The threat issued by a desperate-sounding Trinamul supremo Ms Mamata Banerjee about her followers "taking to the streets" to enforce the bandh and make it "a memorable success in every sense," did not cut much ice with the politically conscious people of the state.

With 100 per cent attendance in the tea estates and close to 90 per cent in of the industrial units, the bandh hardly took off before tamely flopping. There was an average 80 per cent attendance in the government and private offices, with more than 40 per cent of the officers attending to their duties. People in the rural areas and industrial belts did not allow the bandh to divert them in any manner from their daily routine.

A plethora of buses and tramcars, plus the usual presence of the yellow-and-black cabs in Kolkata and the mufassil towns throughout the day, went to make the threat of a "disrupted public life" (as repeated ad nauseam in the audio-visual media in particular) a big myth.

There was no major incident affecting law and order throughout the day. Close to 1000 persons were arrested in the state for forcing the people to go off the streets and off transport vehicles during the peak office hours.

The bandh was called on two issues. First, there was supposed to have taken place a "rampant increase" in tuition fees in some educational institutions and in some categories of hospital charges.

Another cause cited by the bandh-sponsors, SUCI and the Naxalites, was in reality a very marginal enhancement in electricity charges --- as per the recommendations of the Electricity Regulatory Commission, an all-India body. Both issues were non-starters. The tuition fees and hospital charges were merely readjusted to make them fit with the present financial realities; they had been hitherto afloat in a kind of financial limbo for close to four decades. There were no ripples either among students and their parents or among the people when the revised fees for educational institutions and hospitals were announced some time back.

In increasing the electricity charges, the Left Front government was constrained to abide by the recommendations by a central regulatory institution on power. The latter is a semi-judicial all-India body whose recommendations are virtually mandatory.

Again, there was no protest from the people. The Trinamul’s Jail Bharo programme and the SUCI’s electricity payment boycott had already proved miserable failures. The Left Front government had made it very clear nonetheless, and much earlier than the SUCI-Naxal combine issued the bandh call, that if anyone felt any kind of grievance, the door to discussions was always open. The fact that the SUCI and the Naxalite faction went ahead with the bandh call was in all probability an exercise to gauge the popular mood, now that some time has elapsed since the Left Front’s memorable, sixth consecutive triumph in assembly polls. It is also likely that the call was issued at the behest of the Trinamul Congress. Its unseemly hurry in lending "moral and material support" to the bandh exposed its ploy to back a proxy fight against a democratically elected state government.

There has never been any doubt about the inability of the Trinamul Congress today to even issue a bandh call in Bengal. Today it stands thoroughly discredited, groaning under the added burden of having to put up with a house divided. The manner the people of Bengal shrugged off the inane attempt at organising the bandh should be pointer to the two Left groups who (willingly) played in the hands of the reactionary forces by sponsoring the bandh.

Speaking to media at the Muzaffar Ahmad Bhavan in the evening, state CPI(M) secretary Anil Biswas congratulated the people of Bengal for ensuring that the bandh failed, and comprehensively. Biswas noted the important role played by the workers, peasants and employees in making the bandh a non-event. He appealed to the SUCI and the Naxalite fraction to refrain from any acts in the future that might strengthen the forces of reaction. He thanked the state Left Front government for having taken appropriate steps to keep the bandh day free of unwelcome incidents, despite grave provocations.

Left Front chairman Biman Basu and chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya also congratulated the people of Bengal for rejecting the bandh.