Nothing wrong till hartals boomerang on you

It is easy to call for a bandh because it takes just a moment of frenzy and a pinch of ideology. It is also very easy to find reasons for bandhs as there are plenty in this country. But it is not as easy to solve those problems and when your own weapon pinches you, it takes a new twist. This is exactly what happens to the Left parties who live in Stalin era in China and former USSR. Economic Times has reported that Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, who was being feted as West Bengal’s Deng Xiaoping by his admirers, has blamed his party for the image deficit of his government. He also came down heavily against his party’s practice of calling bandhs at the slightest provocation. “I am against bandhs. Unfortunately I belong to a political party which calls bandhs. I have kept quiet. But from now on, I’ll not keep quiet,” he said. The self-criticism did not end there. “Gherao is illegal and immoral. It is our contribution to the English language. It will not be allowed in the state,” he said. The chief minister was replying to a query by Biswadip Gupta, joint managing director and CEO of JSW Bengal Steel, who wanted Mr Bhattacharjee to react on state-sponsored bandhs and those called by different political parties at an Assocham interactive in Kolkata. This is not the first time that Mr Bhattacharjee has spoken out against strikes. Following a nation-wide strike in 2006, Mr Bhattacharjee had apologised to the infotech companies in Kolkata for the inconvenience caused by the strike. The chief minister also wanted his party’s polit bureau to decree that the IT industry should be kept out of union activities as it was not a traditional industry and could not be governed by the same rules. But Citu leadership forced party general secretary Prakash Karat to announce that unions had the right to organise themselves even in the IT sector.