Bandh politics: All smoke and mirrors

The shallow symbolisms that underline the nature of political engagement in India could not leave untouched the Bharat bandh call given on Wednesday by the BJP and Left parties, and several other non-Congress and non-BJP outfits as well.

All over again, television news reports referred to a “partial” response to the bandh call at most places, which in reality means that parties associating with the bandh try and keep shops closed in key urban centres that happen to lie in their area of influence. What a contrast with the bandh calls of a couple of decades ago. In those days the railways mostly shut down, the airports were on strike and public transport networks ground to a halt. Shops and offices that didn’t care for the bandh call suffered “collateral damage” in that their employees simply couldn’t make it to work due to transport systems being completely disrupted.
Evidently, this contrast is summoned on account of the emasculation of the trade union movement in the country and the loosening of their political association. Rousing victory will no doubt still be claimed in the rhetorical flourish of those who called the bandh on the strength of the closing down of some market areas, a few schools (mostly for cautionary reasons), and the forced stoppage of trains in some parts of the rail network by purported supporters of some political parties. This would once again emphasise that symbols and shouts and fraudulent boasts have come to matter more than substance in India’s public life.
In the case of Wednesday’s nationwide shutdown call, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamul Congress has turned out to be the star player rather than the BJP, the country’s main Opposition party, by virtue of its decision to leave the ruling coalition in New Delhi. And yet, Ms Banerjee did not back the call for a Bharat bandh. The anomalies don’t end there. The Communist parties and the BJP shared a platform in New Delhi. The NDA’s Shiv Sena did not take part in the protest action in Mumbai (citing the ongoing Ganesh festival), just as it had not backed the BJP’s presidential candidate in July. Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav backed the bandh call, but is politically endorsing the government against whose policies the protest was directed. The game of smoke and mirrors is the stuff that our politics is made of.