Ban the bandh

It is bandh time again. The Bihar controversy has erupted just in time for quite a few of those forces waiting to play once more their fa...

It is bandh time again. The Bihar controversy has erupted just in time for quite a few of those forces waiting to play once more their favourite game of disrupting public life in the name of staging a democratic protest. The issue of Article 356 and the move for its imposition in that state may indeed merit an intense constitutional debate. Their attempt, however, is to make their point on the street, and do this in such a way as to cause the maximum public inconvenience. The seven-hour shutdown in Kerala on Friday against the move was especially noteworthy on one count. It was the high court of this state that had pronounced the pioneering verdict outlawing bandhs as a form of political activity. The ruling, upheld by the apex court, did rattle professional agitators. But the ingenuity of politicians and their parties, except when they are trying to find solutions to the people’s problems, knows no hounds. So they have decided to call their action a hartal (strike), thus pretending not to have indulged incontempt of court. Coercion by any other name, however, does not become any less crude.

The Kerala bandh was particularly objectionable for being sponsored by the state government. The court had taken notably sharp exception to this specific aspect of its illegitimacy as a political action. The Left Democratic Front rulers, however, have not been alone in this regard. The Rabri Devi regime in Bihar, at the centre of the controversy, has itself already led two violent bandhs to press its right to rule. Tamil Nadu under Muthuvel Karunanidhi’s survival-seeking DMK government has called for a bandh on Monday. Others may follow suit. A unity of non-BJP parties on the question may presage near-total closure of the nation’s activities, mainly economic, for an unaffordable number of man-hours, entailing severe hardship for common citizens. It is amazing that the irony of this should be lost upon bandh-makers, that it should need judicial pronouncements to stress that those charged constitutionally with theprotection of public life and property cannot be associated with protests of this kind. It has been suggested that the Kerala High Court take suo motu notice of the LDF government’s violation of the verdict, and the suggestion deserves to be endorsed. Any initiative by the Supreme Court to outlaw bandhs of official sponsorship elsewhere as well will certainly encounter no popular objection.

Nor should it inspire political opposition. The bandh culture has hardly benefited political parties. It has only added grist to the mill of those whose untiring attempt it has been to make the people apolitical and anti-political. Violence does not voice a democratic protest. No point in any public debate is convincingly made by paralysing traffic and forcibly closing shops and services. Support can only be falsely claimed for an unargued viewpoint from victims ranging from a patient who cannot be rushed to hospital and a student who has to skip an examination. It is surely time for the leading participants in ourelectoral polity to evolve forms of protest that are a little more citizen-friendly.