Says Philip Augustine, managing director of Lakeshore Hospital, Kochi: “Surgeries and consultations would have been booked months before. If patients cannot reach the hospital, they miss treatment at the correct time. Cancer patients are the worst hit. Even chemotherapies have had to be postponed due to hartals. On a hartal day, we have send ambulances to bring doctors hoping that ambulances will be spared by the agitators. The entire logistics of the hospital goes haywire.”

Clearly, the fundamental right to strike over-rides all these. Consider:

• The August 20 hartal was the fifth statewide hartal in Kerala this year. The same day, the Manalur Assembly constituency in Thrissur observed another hartal to protest against the murder of a BJP activist.

So endemic is the hartal virus in the state that ideology is no immunity.

• BJP was first to organise a statewide hartal this year. The party is yet to get a single Assembly seat but its hartal on May 2 grounded the entire state. Its cause: protest against price rise.

• Both comrades and the Parivar — who otherwise kill each other in Kannur and then call hartals to mark that — joined hands to shut down the state on June 5 against the hike in fuel prices.

• Hindu groups again hit the state with another hartal on July 3, over the Amarnath land issue.

• On July 21, the CPM-led Left slapped another hartal across the state in protest against the death of a school teacher in political violence, allegedly involving the Muslim League.

... contd.