Industry enraged at Bandh tirade

Kolkata, Dec 19: Industry seems to be appalled at the series of bandhs in last three weeks, specially since it holds on ransom Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's crusade against strikes to cut down on effective mandays losses.

After four consecutive bandhs on December 1, 5, 13 and 14, the next would be on December 21 and 22, thanks to the Trinamool Congress over the discovery of the body of a teenage girl in turbulent Singur--site of the proposed Tata Motors small car venture. Industry is unhappy with the series of bandhs called by various parties within a span of three weeks. CII National chairman-SME forum Ravi Poddar told UNI today,''Industry feels demoralised as things are not moving in the right directions. Bandh is not an alternative and a party has no right to express their resentment against the Centre or the state government through bandhs. I hope good sense will prevail and these political parties, who are calling bandhs every now and then, should allow people to work.'' Cross sections of industry showed resentment against the 48-hour bandh called by the Opposition on Thursday and Friday. Birla group of companies chairman B K Birla said,''Strikes and lockouts does not help anyone in the long run. It will have an impact on the state's economy.'' RPG vice-chairman Sanjiv Goenka virtually reiterated Birla's discontent. ''Anything that disrupts normal life and activity should not be encouraged. Bandh cannot be a means of protest.'' Several years of brand building and image revamp have gone to waste. Bengal has been showing wrong signals to the investors outside Bengal and India. ''After several years of hard work of team Buddha, when investments started flowing into our state, we are again back to square one,'' Patton Chairman Sanjay Buddhia lamented.

''This bandh will have dire consequences. There had been apprehensions among the investors outside Bengal. We have worked hard to remove that. Now how do we correct the image again, is a million dollar question,'' he said.

The bandh not only affect the IT sector, which is 24x7, it affect all other industries as well. Talk about export oriented units.

There is a chain reaction due to the stoppage of normal flow of life. ''Our business comes to standstill and the supply chain and logistics are broken. If we miss a single consignment, our export clients will not listen to us,'' Engineering Export Promotion Council Chairman(ER) R P Sehgal said.

HRAEI (Hotel&Restaurant Association of Eastern India) president S K Khullar said, ''There have already so many bandhs in a row. For one, the hotel and restaurant industry suffers great losses, anything between Rs 30-40 crore for a total bandh. Even for the partial ones, sales are only half of a regular day's. What's more, it's not just restaurants which suffer, but also the little streetside stalls, which are deprived of a day's earnings.'' PWC spokesperson questioned, ''Why should there be bandhs without any major reason? Though IT is kept outside the purview of the bandh, everything get disrupted. The salaried class, indutry all lose mandays but think about the daily wageearners and labourers! Who will support them?'' Ask Cognizant Technologies CEO(ER) Siddhartha Mukerjee about his reactions, he said,''We are concerned about the international clients. They are not bothered about a bandh in Bengal. They want seamless flow of work and we need to meet the deadline.''

UNI