Whenever we hear the word bandh , one place comes to our mind "Karbi Anglong". Over the years we have joke over the frequent bandhs that were imposed by the various organisations in Karbi Anglong. Bandh no doubt is an effective way of protesting but unfortunately there is growing incidence where it's being misused for narrow interests. Bandh breaks the flow of human life, delays our work, leads to loss of revenue, makes us miss our interviews, exams get cancelled , public as well as private property get damaged, incidents of assaults and harassment of passengers , ruins people's wedding and a nightmare for patients etc.
looking at the present scenario of our society what we have joke about all this years , we are sadly practicing it now. Call for Bandh by various organisation is on the rise .
There is always a threat for bandh in the newspaper with the ultimatium " if demands not meet we will take our own course of action for which the government would be held solely responsible ". It's becoming a favourite tool for various organisations to make known of their grievances and get their demands fulfilled. Unfortunately a negative precedence has been set up in Haryana where the Jat agitators completely hijack the state for nearly 10 days which led to loss of crores of public and mostly private property and loss of precious human life and instead of taking action against those responsible for looting, arson and violence , the Haryana government decided to look into their grievances and give in to their demands .
Just hope that the various organisations in Nagaland do not copy the same tactics as we are good at copy cating but sadly we copy mostly the negative things.
Bandh may be fun to some extend for salaried employee because it means a day off from work but its a curse to the poor daily wage earner whose daily wage suffers, a curse to the enterpreneurs whose business get affected, a curse for travellers who get stranded for hours. Finally incurring a bigger loss to the state and the country. Therefore the administration need to ensure that bandhs are not encouraged and forcefully imposed upon the people by various organisations and they can do that by being serious about the genuine grievance of the public. They should not be always in a fire fight mode, playing catch up game and get caught off guard like the lynching of an accused by mobs in Dimapur. Government need to be pro active over genuine issue and come up with a compromise solution to the problem, instead of waiting for something to happen.
If they are going to solve the problems and going to take necessary action , why wait to take action after the bandh has been imposed and people take the law in their own hand.
If the government walk the talk and do what is needful then the so called bandh will not be a part of our politics but if the government continues to neglects the genuine grievances of the people and take the public for a ride by playing politics and blame game over issues related to pothole roads, development, breaking down of law and order, corruption, nepotism, favouritism etc then bandh will be the order of the day and it will not be beneficial for state like Nagaland which is yet to achieved political, social and economic stability.
Moameren Pongen Asst Prof, Chumukedima
