Editorial
The violence before and during hartals
Anarchy is not politics
The rampant misuse of the democratic weapon of general strikes or hartal in recent times has had the nation wondering about the course of constitutional politics in the country. It is especially the repeated hartals called by the opposition this month on any number of pretexts that has us worried. The worry assumes an extreme nature given that these hartals, and the days preceding them, have been characterized by wholesale chaos and destruction of public as well as private property. On the eve of every hartal, as we have noticed, it is a culture of impunity which goes into work, to the extent that citizens are left in a state of absolute panic and businesses are afraid that they will become targets of frenzied mob violence.
From the 1950s to the early 1970s and then in the 1980s, hartals were employed as a legitimate weapon in the interest of an establishment or a restoration of democracy because of an acute absence of a democratic structure. Unfortunately, since the return to elected government in the early 1990s, the country has been witness to hartals that have, to our horror, almost always supplanted parliament. In these past many weeks, the manner in which the opposition has called hartals after every incident of calculated anarchy has been appalling. Hartal supporters, or more appropriately anarchists, have had no qualms about setting fire to buses, cars, motorcycles and trains as a way of drawing attention to their demands. Unfortunately, we have not heard or seen opposition political figures condemning such violence or asking their followers to refrain from such violence.
As it is, the national economy has been taking a bad battering because of hartals. Education has been laid low through frequent shutdowns of schools, colleges and universities. Banks and other institutions have had a slowdown in their activities. Overall, people have not only felt obstruction in movement but have also been pushed into a state of panic on account of the explosions resulting from an assortment of bombs and similar means of incendiary behaviour.
The government has a responsibility to ensure that those who cause anarchy are dealt with severely. For its part, a responsible opposition owes it to the country to make sure that its politics does not lead to social chaos. There is yet time to pull back from the brink. We do not have to become a backwater to the rest of the world as it moves ahead.
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