Carry on commerce

: The country was quite underwhelmed by the country-wide bank unions-plus-Left parties’ strike on Wednesday. True, public sector banks were affected but SBI, the largest Government bank, and all private banks were open. ATMs of strike-affected banks functioned as well. Transport services, barring in the Marxist suzerainties of Bengal and Kerala, didn’t register any revolutionary tremor. Telecom services ran smoothly everywhere, even though some BSNL staff were contributing to the people’s cause. All major cities bar Kolkata had just another working day. This tells our unions and their Marxist political backers something they simply refuse to understand: India has changed and strikes are becoming either risibly ineffective or can attract huge popular disapprobation.

The private sector provides many of the critical services that used to be strike-prone earlier. Imagine a BSNL/MTNL strike a decade back. There would be chaos. Now BSNL’s and MTNL’s management will really fight hard to stop a strike because their consumers can migrate to private service providers. Small private business in cities other than the two which live in apprehension of Marxist praxis has the choice of being indifferent to strike calls, even to those given by big national parties. Big private business can even get around disruption — for example, BPOs reschedule shift times. Rural India has always been outside the strike zone. So India can shrug as some of its citizens chase windmills like “neo-liberal conspiracies”.