Why Buddha said: The next bandh, I will open my mouth

Far from it. At the state secretariat meeting today, Bhattacharjee was silent but just a week ago, his No. 2 and state Industries Minister Nirupam Sen had echoed his lines at a meeting with chambers of commerce. “We, in the government, do not support bandhs,” he said. “In West Bengal, bandhs assume a different connotation. Elsewhere, everything doesn’t get affected the way it does here. This should certainly be considered. From the government’s side, we assure you we do not want bandhs. But we do not get what we want and what we get we do not want.”

His cabinet colleague Subash Chakrabarty endorsed this. “Bandhs did not help anyone,” he said, adding: “The day is not far when people will outright reject bandhs.” Clearly, there’s a disconnect between the CPM Government and the CPM party. And while in Kerala, the mood is one of acceptance, few in the West Bengal government can afford to endorse a bandh call:

“We are turning the clock back.”

• On Bandh Day on August 20, the image of 11-year-old Supon Biswas, who had a brain surgery three months ago, and was stranded at the Howrah Station for five hours with his relatives played out across the state. Similar was the plight of Panchanan Biswas, a villager from Birbhum who had to take his son for a crucial follow-up medical check-up to Bangalore. Their images that day forced CPM leaders to arrange for shifting the patients to Howrah General Hospital. A couple came to the family’s help, having arranged for their air fare to Bangalore the next morning.

• The June 5 bandh by the Left against the Oil price hike — and the Trinamool bandh the next day on the same issue — meant that Ritter Wolfgang, an automation expert from German firm Schuler, was stranded at the airport. It didn’t help matters that Wolfgang was to visit the Jamshedpur Tata Motors headquarters in connection with the Nano’s production line. He had to abandon his plan and fly out of Kolkata.

... contd.