The July 5 Bharat Bandh should serve as a lesson to our opposition parties of the need to introspect. Rather than reinventing themselves for the 21st century,they continue to deploy the confrontational strategies of the 60s and 70s by organising rallies,strikes and street corner speeches,which no longer yield dividends.
If the success of Mondays bandh,called to highlight escalating prices (particularly fuel),is judged in terms of whether there was a shutdown of essential services,then the organisers can claim victory in several parts of the country. In states like West Bengal,Kerala,Bihar and Gujarat,where the respective governments backed the strike call,essential services virtually came to a halt. On the other hand,if success is determined by the extent to which the strike galvanised public support which one suspects is the prime purpose for such a programme then it was a resounding flop. There was little public empathy and the Central government is not planning to roll back oil prices. More than the ruling party,it was the media and the public which were vocal in their disapproval of the strike. Even those badly affected by the price rise saw it as a meaningless gesture that caused much public inconvenience and a heavy loss to the exchequer.
With the balance of power so delicately poised,a united opposition could have been extremely influential in shaping government policy. But the opposition has failed to take advantage of the situation because of internal disunity. Some parties leave themselves open to blackmail and blandishments from the ruling party,while others take their ideological opposition to the BJP to such ridiculous lengths that they refuse to coordinate with the main opposition party. The absence of a constructive political dialogue between the government and the opposition comes out of a mindset that assumes that the opposition and ruling party must automatically be at loggerheads on every issue. For instance,the NDAs approach to petrol hikes was not very dissimilar to the UPAs. Steps to do away with the administered price of diesel and petrol were first taken in 2002,which explains why some politicians courting arrest on Monday looked a tad uncomfortable with the protest.
Bandhs had more relevance in an era when the anti-establishment space in the media was very limited. The government-controlled Doordarshan and AIR rarely took note of the opposition. But today,with a plethora of private TV news channels constantly featuring political debates,all parties have ample opportunity to have their say. Live parliamentary coverage has also made it much easier for politicians to get their message across. Incidentally,another reason for falling numbers for political movements and rallies is that the avenues for distraction have multiplied since the entertainment-starved days when Doordarshan reigned supreme. Back in March 1977,Indira Gandhi assumed that if the popular Hindi movie Bobby was telecast on Doordarshan,then people would stay home and not join JPs historic rally against the Emergency at Delhis Ramlila grounds.
In recent times,even cadre-based political parties have generally failed to generate mass enthusiasm for their causes. (Mamata Banerjees campaign against the West Bengal governments land acquisition in Nandigram and Singur was a notable exception.) The Left may have withdrawn support to Manmohan Singhs government over the Indo-US nuclear deal,but it could not convince public opinion of its stand. The BJP was not able to play the anti-terrorism card effectively in the 2009 Lok Sabha election. Despite the terror attack,Mumbai voted for the Congress,the public perceived the BJPs position on terror as more self-serving than genuine. The challenge for our political parties is to appear credible to the new generation of voters. To earn the confidence and respect of the public in the post-liberalisation era,they have to eschew the confrontationist politics of the past and adopt a more constructive,reasoned and imaginative approach.
coomi.kapoor@expressindia.com
