Mamata wants bandhs and blockades declared illegal.

Mamata Banerjee’ two-day visit to Dhaka presents Bangladeshis with a golden opportunity to pick her brains about hartals, or bandhs. Mamata considers strikes such a bane that she plans to ban them. As shut-downs bring life to a grinding halt pretty often in Bangladesh too, her hardline views on hartals might just help the nation of 156 million deal firmly with a tool of protest which has acquired notoriety on both sides of the border.

The West Bengal chief minister will accompany prime minister Manmohan Singh to Bangladesh on September 6-7 on a state visit whose objective is to bring the two nations closer than ever before. Obviously the focus will be on contentious bilateral issues waiting for decades to be resolved to the satisfaction of both countries. But during breaks discerning Bangladeshis could quiz Mamata about her strategy vis-à-vis hartals which periodically cripple West Bengal and badly tarnish its image across India.

Frankly speaking, it would not be a bad idea at all for Bangladesh’s reigning Begum and the Bibi from Bengal to meet over tea and tel-bhaja for a quiet tête-à-tête while the ageing Dr Singh has an invigorating post-lunch nap; the two ladies could also consider inviting Bangladesh’s other Begum to the no-holds-barred brain-storming session on bandhs on the sidelines of the much-awaited summit.

But can Mamata really enlighten her hosts? Although she recently threatened to clamp a ban on hartals, it’s hard to fathom the depth of her knowledge. I think she is worth quizzing anyway. So Bangladeshis should not hesitate to take advantage of Mamata’s presence in their midst for a worthy cause.

Hartals have wreaked havoc in West Bengal — particularly during 34 years of communist rule — but the practice of shutting down businesses, schools and stopping trains by political parties has usually evoked only knee-jerk responses. Bangladeshis, in contrast, have even proposed holding a constitutional referendum to decide once and for all whether hartals inflicted on society by the political class are permissible.

In 2005 an irate Abdul Mannan, president of Bangladesh Sarkari Karmachari Samannaya Parishad (BSKSP) mooted such a referendum. Mannan was given a thumbs-up by then Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Moudud Ahmed – a barrister – who bracketed hartals with fundamentalism and terrorism.

Moreover United Nations Development Programme, Bangladesh, commissioned a study to highlight the negative impact of hartals. The 2005 UNDP report, running into 131 pages compiled by nearly a dozen academics and a market research firm, defined a hartal as “temporary suspension of work in business premises, offices and educational institutions and movement of traffic nationally, regionally or locally, as a mark of protest against actual or perceived grievances called by a political party or parties”.

Some of the findings of a nation-wide survey were contradictory, though. For instance, 95 percent respondents felt that hartals devastated the economy and hurt the interests of the common man. But 63 percent still believed that hartals, despite being associated with intimidation and coercion, were a legitimate political tool. One possible explanation for the paradox was the perfectly respectable origin of hartals: Mahatma Gandhi resorted to them to liberate undivided India from British colonial rule. The survey also revealed that 70 percent of respondents believed there are several alternatives to debilitating hartals.

But the Awami League and Bangladesh Nationalist Party still compete with one another to call strikes in Dhaka and other cities on any pretext. Anguished observers regurgitate the UNDP findings whenever there is a hartal. Just last month, the BNP subjected the country to a two-day strike after the system of holding elections under a non-partisan caretaker administration was abolished. Sooner than later, there are bound to be more hartals.

Mamata, who projects herself as a pro-development CM, was sufficiently enraged by a strike call in a tea-growing belt to lash out at hartals. Accusing communists of fanning unrest in tea gardens of the Terai and Dooars region after being voted out of power, she threatened to enact a law banning strikes in West Bengal. Without mincing words, Mamata said that even if workers of a tea estate were being denied their rights, no trade union had the right to disrupt the lives of millions of people inhabiting that region by calling a strike.
Mamata’s cabinet colleague, Subrato Mukherjee, confessed sheepishly that the last time a bandh actually reduced results was way back in 1953! Since then every single hartal in Bengal has been an utter failure. In mid-1953, serial bandhs organised by the Bus and Tramfare Enhancement Resistance Committee, an umbrella organisation of left parties, forced the tram company to roll back second class fares despite the government approving a hike. After that runaway success, bandhs have invariably failed to deliver.

If Bangladesh and West Bengal can jointly celebrate the 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore and pool their resources to save the Royal Bengal tiger from poachers, then their top women leaders who relish the hilsa, jamdani saris and Nazrul Geeti, can surely explore ways to defuse the ticking bandh bomb.

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S. N. M. Abdi is a consulting editor, writer, columnist and broadcaster from India.

Photo: bdnews24.com

There is a smart cookie in Shiekh Hasina’s office; most probably a woman because women are usually smarter than men. A single word – angst – in Hasina’s get-well-soon official message to Sonia Gandhi was a dead giveaway! Hasina’s message, obviously drafted by a faceless but smart bureaucrat, specifically mentioned Sonia’s post-surgery “angst” while assuring her that the Bangladeshi premier along with the whole nation prayed to God for her speedy recovery.

Why am I excited by angst? Angst encapsulates a feeling of acute anxiety, insecurity, or apprehension. But when is the last time that a head of state publicly uttered that word? Or it figured in an official statement by a prime minister or president? I can bet my right arm that never before has it embellished any communiqué issued by the highest office in any country. And that’s why I am so thrilled.

To be honest, I am overjoyed that a south Asian civil servant peppered one premier’s missive to another with a word that I became familiar with during my school days in Sahibgunj — a small town in Bihar [now Jharkhand] where I grew up.

Angst apart, Hasina’s message betrayed the special bond between the Wajeds and Gandhis. Hasina not only called Sonia her sister but stressed that her entire family, including her children, hoped that the operation was “flawlessly smooth and successful”. I think Hasina’s heart beats for Sonia. And luckily, Hasina is blessed with bureaucrats capable of translating her deep concern for Sonia’s health and well-being into sparkling English.

It’s hardly a secret that Sonia was operated at New York’s Sloan-Kettering hospital which is known for treating cancer cases. But neither the Congress Party nor Gandhis have disclosed what the surgery was for or even the name of the hospital. According to a brief statement issued by the party, Sonia is recovering in an intensive care unit abroad after an operation which the surgeon indicated was successful. It added that besides Rahul and Priyanka, son-in-law Robert Vadra is with Sonia who will be away for two to three weeks.

Interestingly, India’s most powerful Bengali – Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee – is not a part of the four-member group constituted by Sonia to look after Congress affairs in her absence. The core group comprises A.K. Antony, Rahul Gandhi, Ahmed Patel and Janardan Dwivedi. Pranab’s exclusion has set tongues wagging. His detractors in the party and government are of course celebrating. Pranab, by the look of things, is unfazed.

So is Pranab no longer a part of the inner coterie? Before you even attempt to answer the question, please note that even Manmohan Singh – the man Sonia evidently trusts more than anyone – is not among the four chosen by Sonia to deal with any crisis while she is recuperating. Strange are the ways of politics. Politics is not simple arithmetic. It’s calculus my friend.

So far the Indian media has displayed extraordinary restraint bowing to the Gandhis’ and the Congress Party’s appeal to respect what they have described as Sonia’s privacy. Used to daily bulletins whenever prominent Indians like Manmohan Singh, former PM A. B. Vajpayee or matinee idol Amitabh Bachchan are hospitalised or operated upon, the print and electronic media are groping in the dark.

Remarkably, the Gandhis have kept India’s diplomatic missions in the USA at an arm’s length. Sonia’s medical treatment is purely a private affair. If the services of any bureaucrat have been requisitioned, it’s Pulak Chatterjee’s. Pulak is a long-standing confidant of Sonia who is now India’s executive director at the World Bank headquarters in Washington.

Well there is a Bangladeshi connection! When Chatterjee took leave of absence from the bank to be with Sonia during her hospitalisation and surgery, he handed over charge of the bank’s South Asia constituency to Kazi Aminul Islam of Bangladesh, according to media reports whose authenticity I have no reasons to doubt.

Now let me come back to angst. I was probably in standard nine when I first heard that word. I was telling my principal at St. Xavier’s School in Sahibgunj, Father Stellini — a Maltese Jesuit priest who passed away a few years ago — that I was unable to concentrate on my studies because I had fallen in love for the first time.

“Ah teenage angst”, Father Stellini chuckled and pardoned me for neglecting my studies. Later I consulted a dictionary and discovered what angst meant. I even told the girl I was besotted with that I was afflicted by angst. She probably knew the word already because she said: “It’s better to suffer from angst than acne.”

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S. N. M. Abdi is a consulting editor, writer, columnist and broadcaster from India