Buddha dare not speak here: 75 strikes in Kerala already this year and losing count

Thiruvananthapuram, August 28: West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s remark against bandhs may be politically very incorrect for his comrades — but, factually, it couldn’t have been more accurate.

Ask Rodiya, the mother stranded at the Thiruvananthapuram railway station barely eight days ago when Left unions called a 24-hour hartal — not a bandh since bandhs were effectively banned by the Kerala High Court in 1997 — against the “economic policies of the Centre.”

Rodiya, from Kottayam, got the news that her five-year-old son had died. Roads being blocked, she rushed to the railway station where citing the “neoliberal” policies of the Centre, a group of comrades squatted on the tracks. Her tears were of little help. Kottayam is barely three hours away from Thiruvananthapuram but Rodiya reached her home only late evening and that, too, under police protection.

From the trauma of a mother who’s lost her child and can’t get home to countless others, unseen and unheard, who are forced to put everything on hold, Kerala is now the perpetual victim of the bandh-success story: this year alone, 75 hartals have paralysed districts and towns, six the entire state. From Saddam’s execution to the surge in Oil prices, from even chikungunya to the death of a local leader — the cause hardly matters when a hartal itself is the rallying cause.

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.

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