BANDH- WAT FOR??

On 5^th July Bharat bandh was the most popular topic on twitter. Very rarely do we see an Indian trending on twitter. This time bharat is trending for probably the most wrong reason possible. With someone from France asking “Bharat Bandh wats dat??” Well in India it’s a holiday where you can sit back home and enjoy a movie. Our politicians give us so many reasons to be proud of…indeed!!

Bandhs are way of protest against some issue or policy. But in India sadly, calling for a bandh has become a status issue for political parties. Though 5^th july bandh was called by an united opposition in protest against the price hike by the government but sadly at the end of the day India suffered a 5000 crore loss. And the hooliganism which we saw on streets across the country was unacceptable. With shops being shut down and stones being pelted by party workers on people on road. Road, rail and air all kind of traffic was affected. The country came to a halt. By evening, political parties claimed complete success. Brinda karat of left, Vasundhra Raje(BJP), Udhav thackery(SS he is seen only on such occasions) proudly claimed the bandh is hugely successful as if India has won an Oscar. How do you measure if a bandh is successful or not?? In India the success of a Bandh is determined by the number of buses vandalized and burnt by the time the Bandh expires. So Shiv Sena, MNS and SP which are in news always for the wrong reason will try and work very hard on these days. Example- 78 buses were damaged by Sena in Mumbai.

Bandhs are declared only in India. There are 365 days in a year and India can afford to have at least 365 political parties who can call for a bandh on each day. When terrorists struck and brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Centre, immediately relief measures had started in US. If you go by what is done in India in such a situation, apparently Bush should have called a “US bandh or a New York bandh to express the spontaneous feelings of the citizens.”

I don’t understand how this public display of caring for the common man by the opposition is going to reduce the price of my dal and chawal? Is this one day of disruption of public life going to reduce the price of petrol tomorrow? The opposition argued that this was the only way that they could get the government take notice of the concern of the aam aaadmi? Ok so now let’s see what the government is going to do in the next few days? Nothing is gonna happen. Tomorrow all will be normal. Parties will continue blaming each other and play politics and when after two months government hike’s prices yet again we all will be gifted with yet another holiday. I heard a parent whose kids school was closed due to bandh say “Various kinds of bandh need to be included in the holiday list of school calendar so that we can plan our holidays better”. Ya not a bad idea!!

Lets please use some other productive and fruitful way of protesting. Bringing the country to a standstill, wreckage and vandalism is certainly not a way to protest...........