What is this BAND and who is benefited?
Thursday the May31saw, another big band allover the country called by opposition against the present government to show their protest related to price rise of petrol in particular and inflation in general. However, the million-dollar question that comes to mind immediately is weather we achieve any positive results out of such Bands or strikes which make the life of public so difficult that this is simply beyond words to describe these acts. What I feel is that the bands mainly go against the public, which they claim to benefit the cause of poor. That poor is the one most hit by such strikes in the end, this band deprives him of his wages for the day. The most benefited party is the political groups that organizes such strikes and behave so shamelessly and against the rules on the roads. These strikes should not take place in the public interests in future and banned immediately by the appropriate authorities. This is not the proper way to protest and show your disagreement. The BAND should be banned with immediate effect.

Life of public is paralyzed
The strike organized by non-UPA parties more or less had its impact almost in every part of India including states where UPA lead governments are in power although not as seriously. In most parts of the country, activist stopped trains in different parts of the country, buses destroyed and private vehicles stopped from plying on the roads. Almost everywhere, the agitators tried to keep the markets and other institutes closed. Taxi and auto services were parts of strike; in fact, they stopped every public utility services including banking, government related and educational to make their agitation look like complete success. They succeeded in their mission up to some extent but at the cost of poor people, who suffered most.

These are use less for common people.

Fact is only poor faces the impact
That is true, these agitations said to be carried out for the welfare of poor people but the bitter fact is that these poor are the main victims of such agitations. Another truth is that the petrol users for whom the agitation was proposed were least effected and the diesel and CNG users were most effected people because petrol users were cooling their heels sitting back home while taxi, bus and auto run by diesel and CNG were off the road for wrong reasons.

Only laborers and poor face the music
This does not make much of a difference to people who can afford to stay back home for the duration of agitation and enjoy it like a holiday but the poor who has to his bread every day has to make compromise with his stomach for the day. Another fact is that nothing stops for the influential ones even during agitations and while every thing is closed as it appeared practically. But was it closed for most of the resourceful people? Perhaps not, because internet makes them enable to make transactions online and keep working online.

BAND has no more impact
Apart from gaining advantage, weight and showing others their political importance there is nothing much, they gain out of these undisciplined acts. The organizers of these strikes must admit it that they do it for their own gain, which carries very little advantage for public who they claim to be their main aim of such BANDS. People with online facilities were busy purchasing shares, tickets for traveling, dealing with customers, addressing their clients, dealing with their customers and chatting and talking with friends online. So the strike had no impact on them but the worst effected was the poor of this country.

Look at the figures
RS-15000, 00000000- yes, this is the official figure we have lost due to that agitation that took place on May31, I shall not dilute the impact by writing this figure in billions because it would not look as big then. There is much more in this, which we shall never be able to account for. How would you calculate the billions of hours of manpower that has been wasted, how would you calculate the revenue that was never generated due to closure of business and how would you calculate the losses incurred due to services cancelled.

Do you know?
There were more than fifteen thousands business organizations who participated in this strike and more than five hundred million business establishments allover the country kept their shutters down. Now this is up to you calculate direct and indirect taxes those could be generated during the day. True, some of them would be carried forwarded and shall be account for but the losses incurred due to loss of work force is not retraceable. The loss of destroyed vehicles would never be recovered; the losses incurred due to sabotage to public property would never be recovered. Now the question is what happened to the law that enabled government to recover the losses from the erring parties. Would they dare to take such a step?

What did you get at the end of the day?
They started with a slogan that nothing lesser than a complete rollback would be acceptable as far as the cost of petrol was concerned and the only point of agitation initially but later the point of inflation was added in the agenda to make it look it more impressive. There was an emergency meeting of oil companies to discuss and find out a solution and they though a deduction of rupees 1.60 would be appropriate to give relief to consumers but they also reached to the conclusion that there is a need to hike the prices of diesel and CNG to compensate and look prices more rational. This certainly is enough ground for another agitation in making and shaking the nation allover again.

The conclusion of my effort says that they should not repeat such agitations or BANDS, which have no use for the public in general but in the interest of political benefits for the parties in power and opposition only. As you can see even the parties, which are part of government from out side or openly were part of the agitation and were part of the naked show of making things look ugly.