Ban the Bandhs

This post may be a touch late , given that the bandh in chennai was a week ago.Nevertheless as one of the thousands to suffer a stupid decision by the government,I'll go ahead and vent my opinion.

Even assuming that there was consensus in the state about the reservation issue i.e. everybody agrees that a 27% reservation in higher education is necessary(a highly debatable assumption),I see no connection between the bandh and the ultimate decision that supreme court will take.Supreme court has stated clearly that it needs the correct facts about population distribution from the government, so the immediate priority should have been to get the data correct and present a convincing argument. It just reflects the state government's conviction about it's facts that they chose to call a bandh rather brace themselves for a viable argument.

Coming to the actual bandh itself, it was shocking to see trains passing through chennai station being held for 12 hours. This was a case of a government holding public to ransom.Just imagine the time wasted and god knows how many plans were spoiled.

I was at the receiving end of the after effects of the bandh.I was on my regular trip with my friends to Thiruvannamalai on Saturday night(mar 31).The thiruvannamalai busses which are usually quite free were filled to the brim.However, thanks to the bandh,Bus after bus was filled with people hanging on in the footboards.After waiting at the bus terminus for 3 hours , we realized we were not getting a bus if we waited at the terminus.We went searching for a cab for our trip. Thanks to the bandh again, all travels had a leave that day and there were no cabs were available till early next morning.We had to finally catch a bus that was returning from Thiruvannamalai and a grab a seat in that.Once the bus reached the terminus, there was virtual riot to enter the bus and within seconds the bus was packed enough for everybody smell each other's sweat.Imagine the plight of kids and ladies who had to travel standing for 4-5 hours.Not that I was magnanimous enough to give them my seat, but frankly no body in his right mind would have given away his/her seat to a more needy person.The general inconvenience led to a series of quarrels and the four hour journey was filled with heated gibbering between the standing passengers and seated ones , among the standing passengers, between men and women were the ones to suffer the most, their wailing punctuating the constant quarrel.

If only all buses had run on schedule everybody could have traveled peacefully.I really don't understand how the suffering of numerous people served the purpose of reservation, and this is not even a critical scenario , just a chaotic and inconvenient bus travel.Imagine cases of unexpected health emergencies that would have required transport.

I am convinced that it's high time we ban bandhs.