It’s the season of disgruntlement. Defiant employees of public-sector oil companies have been agitating for higher wages, and have struck at crucial energy supplies, delaying flights (aviation fuel being handled by Indian Oil Corporation) and drastically reducing output at refineries. The government should recognise that it is its fuel price fixing policy and its larger public sector in oil that allows oilmen the opportunity to choke supply lines. Open competition and market pricing would have made this impossible.

This is not a matter of disaffection and injustice — but an obvious, rent-seeking attempt to grab the same benefits. The matter hinges on the price of oil — the matter of whether truckers or citizens are entitled to cheaper fuel or oil sector employees to higher salaries is not a simple question of exploitation or redress. 

Amid all this, what really takes the cake is Delhi’s lawyers’ strike. District lawyers, who fear that the recent CrPC amendment vesting greater discretionary powers in the police would lead to a worrisome drying up of bail cases, have decided to go on strike. They cite warnings of increased lawlessness, but privately admit that their reasons are more self-serving — this despite directives from every judicial authority to refrain from an option where litigants suffer. The strike cuts right to the heart of such agitations — the range of petty, self-serving motives enclosed in grand pleas for justice, and the unfair consequences for ordinary people who are in no way responsible for the trouble. Strikes tend to be widespread when working people fear becoming worse off. But these are generally downbeat times, and it is especially counterproductive for essential service providers to gang up for their own interests, affecting the lives of ordinary people. These strikes are essentially trials of strength — and the government would do well in not succumbing to such transparently self-serving tantrums.