Aparajita Gupta*
*2nd year law student, National Law University, Delhi
5 July 2010 was another unusual day in the history of the Indian democracy. This day marked the “Bharat Bandh” by the opposition parties against the hike in fuel prices blaming it all on the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre. Now what makes this day unusual is the fact that many types of protesting people came to the fore.
One type was constituted by the party members of the opposition and the members of the public who were supporting the Bandh. These people can be called the ‘supporters’. The next type of ‘passive supporters’ were the ones who didn’t open their shops or who forbade their family members from going even to the nearest market or didn’t go to work out of fear of riots that could take place or destruction of public transport. It can be safely said that some of them weren’t supporting the opposition and most of them didn’t care but for the fear that it instilled in them. So they avoided work and even avoided venturing out of their homes as far as possible not to show their support for the protestors but to safeguard themselves and their family. Looking from the perspective of the protestors, this was misunderstood as a symbol of support.
The third category of people could be called ‘lazy supporters’. This section of the society consists of those who neither supported nor were against the Bandh, but they got an extended weekend and weighed it to be more valuable as against going to work as is usual on a Monday. Thus, these members of the public converted the day appointed for the ‘Bharat Bandh’ into an undeserved holiday fit (according to them) to be enjoyed. Looking from the point of view of the protestors, even this counted as supporting the Bandh by not going to work as usual.
Last come the people fit to be called ‘workaholics’ who went to work and carried out their daily activities completely ignoring the fact that there was a countrywide protest. This section may consist of those who support the central government but mostly it shows that these people are unaffected by political moves which are taken to bring the whole country to a standstill in the name of protesting under the garb of democracy.
Now, from the above categorization, one can conclude that this is a defeat of democracy because the protestors are unaware of the reason behind what they feel is support for their cause but is actually non-participation on the part of the public who weigh convenience and their safety above democracy. So the whole purpose of the Bandh gets defeated as no one knows the actual number of people who are against the government’s policies and the number of people who support the cause of the opposition. Thus, it would be wise for the opposition to chalk out another kind of strategy to express their disagreement with the policies of the government instead of having a Bandh and preventing people from carrying out their work and daily activities peacefully.
