THE Bharat Bandh called by the united opposition to register the people’s protest against the UPA government’s failure to arrest the galloping price rise in essential commodities, callous indifference towards the plight of the people and its pro-rich neocapitalist policies was a resounding success. That the whole country came to a grinding halt for one day responding to the call of the opposition parties proved the disapproval and disenchantment of the masses with the Manmohan Singh regime. It is both naive and deluding for the ruling clique to dismiss the bandh as a failure. And a section of the media blindly indulged in its now familiar hocus-pocus to run down the opposition success crassly playing the more profitable role of Congress drumbeaters.
But the Congress will ignore the significance of the national affirmation to the bandh call at its own peril. It was for the first time after 1989 that the united opposition gave a call for a national bandh. The massive support to the call reminded the country of the politics of the seventies and eighties when mass protest had became a way of national life and this has unnerved the new votaries of neoliberalism. Understandable. Nobody is arguing for a return to the days of mindless trade unionism, strikes and layoffs. Their time is past but mass action against the erratic, anti-people policies is another matter. Protest is a legitimate right of the people. Free market economics has its limits.
There has been an attempt to paint the bandh as solely provoked by the withdrawal of subsidies on fuel and gas. That the economy cannot sustain a high subsidy regime and that the opposition is irresponsible and unfit to govern because it is not bothered about the incalculable damage of high deficit and consequent national debt is the ruling party argument. Those who advance this plea simultaneously plead for the oil companies incurring heavy losses because of the price control in fuel. Both cannot be the case at the same time. Government giving subsidies and companies incurring losses. And those who argue for free trade in oil suppress the huge profit that a few companies will now make as a result of decontrol. The same people argue for tax holiday for IT, SEZs and even haute couture industry. Free land, free power, free water and billions of tax waiver for the corporate and transnational companies are justified in the name of economic growth and investment promotion but when it comes to agriculture, food or education subsidies our pink media start grumbling. The same mindset is behind the sham editorials criticising genuine people’s protest.
Even the Congress Party has not denied that the food inflation under its regime has become unbearable for the common man. Its government has been repeatedly shifting the deadline for controlling food inflation for the last five years. The food prices have started spiralling since 2005. First the UPA said there was a global reason for food inflation because of the high international price and low production of food grains. Then it blamed draught in India and many parts of the food grain producing countries. Then it blamed its food minister Sharad Pawar and his wrong, profiteering import- export policy on food items. Speculation in essential commodities market, allowing future trade, collapse of public distribution network, contamination of thousands of metric tonnes of wheat and rice due to poor or no storage facilities have all contributed to the galloping food price. All these essentially point to the failure, if not diabolic manoeuvres in food policy and the administrative mismanagement of the central government. The opposition has been from time to time organising mass agitation to expose this. The bandh has come as a culmination of this anguish of the people. It became historic, because it was more successful than any previous national strike in history. And it was the most spontaneous, peaceful and non-violent. There was least damage to public property. No force was used to make people join the strike. In fact that was not needed. People’s anger had reached the brim and it got an effective outlet.
Bharat bandh further marked a new beginning in politics. It proved in national interest various parties otherwise on the extremes of the political spectrum can join hands. This is what made the establishment most nervous. Its elitist, US dictated economic policies will not go unchallenged. The atmospheric for protest that a united opposition creates will make too hot for comfort for the regime at the helm. In a democracy the idea of mass action has no time warp.
