Questions are here... Answers are welcome....

Today was a bandh in Bharat. Most of us who would be reading this have basically benefited from an extra day off to laze around, be with family or friends or to finish incomplete work. But, what of the common man? The aam aadmi? The auto rickshaw driver, taxi driver, shopkeepers, daily wage labourers, maids, et all. All those people who really help us make our day. Really.. I mean would they be appreciative of this bandh..We are sure that this bandh would never pass muster with them, right? But how can we be so sure? Just because they lose one day of hard labour and would hardly earn any money. Are we not judging them from our perspective and ours only, seemingly while displaying concern about them? Are we just looking at the iceberg here?

This bandh is supposed to be against a 3.5/lit Rs, petrol price hike, 35 Rs /cylinder LPG gas hike. Is that the reason any opposition party would go on a bandh? If view this issue from the angle given above, I would say fire those incompetent MPs, who dare waste our hard earned tax money. Would we not? After all every pundit in the media is probably out there trying to put a figure (each higher than the other) on the amount of money we lost due to this bandh. Now as a leader, should we go by this? Or as a leader should we analyse the whole matter?

As far as I can see this bandh has been a success beyond even the opposition parties’ belief. Maybe people are too timid & fearing violence (of which incidents did happen) stayed home. But having been on this planet for 28 years odd, I am yet to see a bandh which was so total just for an economic issue. I have seen bandhs on this scale for political issues and political leader's demise, but not on an economic issue. Does this mean, we subconsciously somewhere do identify with the cause? The cause not being the trigger point , i.e., the hike in petrol pirces or LPG prices, but rather the continuously steep inflation that has been dogging PLUs (People Like Us), people who have to work daily, and who rely on pensions?

This bandh might symbolise political gains for opposition parties, but this also perhaps in someway symbolises the really deep angst that everyone feels against the prices that have spiralled out of control. For all the posturing we adopt regarding losses, we can easily cover them up by working on some other day. But what of a daily wage labourer who cannot make ends meet at all everyday? If the prices of dal , vegetables, milk and other essential items are so out of reach for him/her , so consistently, would he really care about a day off? How does a common man's meal of dal, chawal sound? It sounds expensive to me and exorbitantly expensive to people below me in the economic ladder and out of reach for the bottom most sections. If you are one of those people, would you support, however opportunistic & symbolic to shake the government up from its slumber? Think & Reflect... maybe you would, maybe you would not. But one thing is for sure, people of India, majority of them, who did vote for this government, did support their bandh, in their own passive way. The next question in your mind is -- what of the violence, intimidation? Simple question- How many people got hurt? How much of public property was damaged. The law states it clearly; the political parties have to pay for this. Implement it. But again, I am still shocked to see such a bandh happening at all for an economic issue. There have calls for plenty of such bandhs, but have never met with such a response? Maybe, as I said earlier, people do actually support the bandh in some subconscious way. My conjecture against yours. :)

Your next question would probably, ok fine enough but what of the impact? Here comes the tricky part.

Impact - immediate - Stop work for a day, everyone suffers and government does not care.

But there is a psychological impact too - The government of the day wants power, and power is with numbers. If the overwhelming numbers (if the success of the band is one, for the political party in power, it definitely is) fall in line behind the opposition party, it is time to worry. And seriously think and contemplate.

If I was Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, or our honourable PM, Economist, Dr Manmohan Singh, I would be very worried. Very worried. To think that for the populist schemes that the Government has been running, the people still abide by the bandh is something totally unexpected. How easy would it be for the opposition parties to raise this issue and rally them by the next election?

Problem is the next election is still a few year away. Opposition wants to send a message to the government -Get your act right, else see the consequences when you face the election again. A bandh, wildly successful one does this well. No amount of haranguing in parliament will do it. The pressure of numbers is just not there. When the lust is for power, it has to be the threat of losing power which strikes fear.

And frankly speaking, how do we expect Rahul Gandhi - who supposedly sold the idea of nuclear power to a poor lady called Kalavati- to react? Any strategies, he can use? I am not sure. His track record aint no good in this matter, even though he is most visible face of "young" India. Perhaps Kalavati today has spoken against him for promising electricity, but snatching the food away from her plate for so long and so shamelessly.

It is time the Government of India reacts as entity which has leadership qualities, takes everyone along and takes decisions which are good for the country in a judicious manner. Of course, I am sure none of us who reading this would say that deregulation of petroleum is absurd. Surely not me. But I just wish the timing was better and the manner was good. If you want to decontrol prices, do it, but perhaps you could adjust the taxes that you collect in such a way, that the aam aadmi does not get hit? A clever leader would think like this and perhaps never let the opposition have an opportunity to call for a band and then be successful at it. Can the opposition parties though do something without calling for a bandh? Would we support something like that? What could it be? Questions are here. Answers are welcome :)

--By Subramanian Iyer