Country mostly ignores country-wide strike call and watches what Left politics is all about
The Indian Express |
3 min read
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The country was quite underwhelmed by the country-wide bank unions-plus-Left parties8217; 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, didn8217;t register any revolutionary tremor. Telecom services ran smoothly everywhere, even though some BSNL staff were contributing to the people8217;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 BSNL8217;s and MTNL8217;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 8212; 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 8220;neo-liberal conspiracies8221;.
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Sometimes however sector-specific strikes have a big impact, as had happened during the Delhi, Mumbai airport shutdowns in the run-up to airport reform. A changed India is seen those times, too. Citizens have become consumers, rightly intolerant of disrupted services and therefore quick and effective in showing their displeasure. The airport strike was met by huge popular criticism and that steadied the government8217;s nerve as it stood down unions and its then coalition partners of the Left. Left8217;s politicians, who swear by strikes, should have figured out by now that the popular association between them and disruption is one of the reasons their electoral influence is not increasing. Shutting down Kolkata and Thiruvananthapuram is no good if India is watching and carrying on. And in Kolkata itself Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was trying to get Tata8217;s Nano project back on schedule as CITU was enforcing a strike on the city8217;s newly begun IT services. That8217;s a huge and damning contradiction. Hypocritical politics of the first order. India, busy on a strike day, still noticed this kind of politics. And it drew the appropriate conclusions.
