Ashish Vaswani
It's been a week since the so called 'Bharat Bandh' was called for by the opposition parties to protest against rising inflation. I wonder if it did anything but prolong the weekend for lazy bums who needed just another reason to skip work and stay home.


Some sources peg the total loss to the country at a staggering Rs. 2735 crores on bandh day. And while political parties such as the Shiv Sena and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena are going around proclaiming how successful their band-o-bust was, a few serious questions need to be asked.

Why did the aam aadmi decide to blindly follow the diktat of a numbered few power hungry men who were doing nothing but salvaging their votebank with cheap publicity for political mileage? Why weren't the authorities stricter with mobs and anti-social elements when bandhs have been declared illegal by the Supreme Court? According to these strike-o-philic parties, how does calling for bandhs help the country to fight against rising prices which is actually a global phenomenon? 

There sure were better ways to protest if that is really what these parties wanted to do. But who cares, when in India you can giftwrap your extended weekend and call it a bandh, all in the name of the great Indian political tamasha!